


How Long I've Waited

by thebermuda



Category: The Dragon Prince (Cartoon)
Genre: Emotional Manipulation, Happy Ending, Just smut, Lots of kissing, M/M, Orgasm Delay/Denial, PWP, unhealthy relationship, viravos
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-26
Updated: 2020-08-06
Packaged: 2021-03-06 04:08:25
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 8
Words: 21,513
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25527193
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thebermuda/pseuds/thebermuda
Summary: Aaravos emerges from the cocoon. Determined to keep Claudia safe, Viren searches for a weakness in the elf and discovers it quickly: Touch. Aaravos will do anything for Viren to touch him.
Relationships: Aaravos/Viren (The Dragon Prince)
Comments: 118
Kudos: 285
Collections: The Dragon Prince





	1. A Deal Is Proposed

**Author's Note:**

> Hi everyone! Whoooo, it has been a very long time since I've posted fanfic that wasn't just about a bunch of OCs. I discovered The Dragon Prince only last week and feel very spoiled by the recent announcement of seasons 4-7. It is amazing how quickly I went from tearing up at the wholesome season 3 ending to imagining how kinky some Viren-Aaravos sex would be.
> 
> Please forgive me if I've misspelled or misused any TDP terms. I'm new to this world!

Viren was still bruised and scratched from the battle when it finally happened. Claudia was away in the woods, gathering berries to eat and restocking their supplies for spells. Viren couldn’t keep his eyes off the cocoon in the back of their new and unworthy abode. From the end of the cave the cocoon pulsed and glowed, whishing like the inside of a womb. Over the past week, as Viren recovered from the wounds he never should have survived, he wished so many times that he had Aaravos’s voice in his ear, to tell him his next move, to explain what the cocoon was and what would eventually emerge from it.

Maybe it was just his imagination, but it seemed that, since this morning, the pulsing was more frequent, like a heartbeat speeding up. Was it also glowing more brightly?

He clutched his staff, tensed and ready, just in case he didn’t like what emerged. If there was any chance it would pose a threat to Claudia, he would snuff it out before it had a chance to orient itself.

And yet. The cocoon represented a hope, too. That Aaravos was not done with him. Aaravos’s absence—or rather, how badly Viren yearned to hear his voice again—made Viren realize how dependent he’d become: All of his strength, his incredible power, had come at the price of his will. He would admit this to no one but himself, but Aaravos had played him easily. Viren had thought reserving his trust would protect him, but it hadn’t really mattered. In the end, had he ever gained true power at all? Or had he just been a vessel for the startouch elf’s will?

The cocoon shone as if in response, light so bright it blinded. Viren shielded his eyes, nearly dropping his staff. He managed to get ahold of it and scrambled to his feet. He couldn’t see, couldn’t hear beyond the sounds coming from the cocoon—a pouring as of liquid flooding the cave floor, a sloshing—then the sudden, unmistakable sound of two feet landing on the floor, and the softest grunt from the voice that had, in the past several weeks, become like a drug to Viren.

* * * *

He looked remarkably unfazed for having just been birthed from a cocoon. Aaravos stood collected and composed, his cloak of stardust unwrinkled, his eyes glimmeringly gold. It was strange to see him in the flesh, as neither a reflection nor a ghost. He was _so much_ like this, taller and broader than Viren had anticipated. It was difficult to get a measure of a man—an elf—when he was always floating beside you or trapped in a mirror’s frame. It was only now that Viren realized he was not only magically outmatched, but physically as well. The idea that Viren had the advantage of surprise was laughable; if he attacked Aaravos now he would simply be killed.

He had no intention of dying so soon after he’d just, well, _died._

He froze when Aaravos locked eyes on him and smirked.

“Viren.” That _voice._ It was strange to hear it not being spoken directly into his ear. It sent chills down his spine. “You are _just_ the one I was hoping to see during my reintroduction into the world.”

Aaravos inhaled rather theatrically. “Ah...the smell of fresh air, not filtered in from a _prison._ It’s so...dynamic.” He cocked his head, his white hair falling into his eyes. “You smell like bruises and sandalwood.” He paused, considering. “It’s very _nice.”_

Viren’s head went a bit clouded every time Aaravos crooned a word; no doubt those croons were laden with elvish magic, intended to muddy his mind. Had that been how Aaravos had manipulated him so easily before?

“Stand back,” he said forcefully.

“My, my,” Aaravos said, stepping toward Viren. “Is that any way to welcome me back to the world?”

“You and I are over,” Viren said. “Our alliance is finished.”

“It’s not,” Aaravos said forcefully. His eyes flickered to the floor of the cave. Viren followed his gaze, his stomach twisting in knots when he saw Claudia’s bag, left behind.

“You _and_ your daughter are here,” Aaravos purred. “How pleasing. Both of you are such powerful assets...”

“I told you before.” Viren glared. “My daughter is no one’s asset.”

“Is she how you survived?” Aaravos asked, and seemed to read the answer on Viren’s face before he could properly respond. “She’s even stronger than I thought. That’s very good...”

“You’re not going to use her for whatever else you have planned,” Viren said. “We’re weakened from the battle anyway. We wouldn’t be of use to you. You’d be better off leaving us in this cave while you go seek whatever it is you want from Xadia.”

He had figured out, during his days of recovery, that what Aaravos desired far surpassed Viren’s vision of the world. Under Aaravos’s thumb, Viren had betrayed his own values. He’d turned loyal soldiers into monsters, and then sacrificed their lives in a battle they hadn’t even won. Never again.

“Don’t pretend to be weak,” Aaravos said. “Believe me, Viren, you have struck my interest more than you know. I can’t be persuaded into abandoning you. And besides...what kind of servant would that make me?”

He bit his bottom lip, widened his eyes. It was amazing how he could do that: Emerge from an enchanted cocoon looking like a nine-foot-tall demigod one moment, and then transform into an ego-wounded feline the next.

Okay. If playing weak wasn’t going to work, then Viren needed another approach.

“You _are_ my servant,” he snarled. “You owe me everything, Aaravos. I discovered your mirror—I found you, after, what, centuries of solitude?”

“Yes,” Aaravos said faintly.

“I’m the reason you’re here at all,” Viren continued. “You. Owe. Me. Everything.”

Suddenly Aaravos was right in front of him, too close for comfort. “Our relationship has up until now been a very lovely give-and-take,” he purred. “I gave you power, and you freed me in turn... I see no reason why I shouldn’t keep taking.”

He looked up toward the entrance of the cave, hearing something that Viren’s human ears weren’t sensitive enough to pick up.

“Your daughter returns,” Aaravos whispered.

“No!” Without thinking, Viren launched himself at Aaravos, hands against his chest, pushing him against the wall of the cave. He looked over his shoulder. “Stop, Claudia! Claudia, get out of here! Run!”

He turned back to the elf, bracing himself for a punch or the blast of a fiery spell. Instead, Aaravos was gaping, pupils huge. His eyes darted back and forth between Viren’s hands pressed against him. His chest rose as if from sudden exertion, even though Viren’s shove had scarcely made him stumble. The reaction made no sense. Except...

What was one of the first things Aaravos had ever said to him, back when he was just a mystery in the mirror?

_How long I’ve waited to hear the sound of another voice._

Aaravos was powerful, maybe even unknowable, but what had always assured Viren that he wasn’t completely in over his head had been the small things: That Aaravos bled, just as he did, when he cut himself on a blade; how he read books during those long hours when Viren had watched him through the mirror, reading at a perfectly human pace, flipping pages so mundanely; that Aaravos smiled and teased, was the most emotive person he knew. Aaravos was a _person._ A person who had been locked away in total solitude for centuries.

How long, then, he must have waited to feel the touch of another.

Claudia was nearing the entrance of the cave now; Viren could hear her footsteps. His plan came to him quickly, with no time to mull it over.

“Leave my daughter alone,” he muttered in Aaravos’s ear, “and you will have me.”

Aaravos only looked back at him wide-eyed, taken aback.

 _“All_ of me,” Viren breathed, brushing his hand significantly down Aaravos's chest.

Viren stepped back from him just as Claudia entered the cave. She saw the starry-skinned elf and gasped.

“Dad!” she said.

“It’s okay, Claudia,” he said sternly, raising his hand to calm her. “It’s okay. But you need to take your bag and go find somewhere safe. Somewhere far away from here.”

“But Dad—”

“Just _do it,”_ he said. “I’ll be okay, I promise. But neither of us will be okay if you stay here.”

“But who is—”

“Claudia,” he raised his voice, “go!”

That was enough, thankfully. She snatched her bag off the cave floor, looking back even as she ran in a mix of shock, fear, and worry. Viren watched her until she was out of sight.

He had no illusions that mere distance would keep her safe from Aaravos.

“Is it a deal?” he said.

Aaravos raised a single eyebrow at him. “You in exchange for your daughter’s safety?”

“Yes.”

“I’m not sure,” Aaravos said. “You were dead a few days ago. How do I know she really healed you? You wouldn’t be much use to me if you suddenly keeled over.”

“I feel _fine,”_ Viren said.

“And you’re not a king anymore. Your own country must hate you now. You may very well be insufficient for my needs.”

Viren had no response to that. To his surprise, though, Aaravos flicked a long-fingered hand in the air as though brushing the words away. “No, no, that’s not really my concern... There are others looking for power who could help me. But _you._ You’re special, Viren. Because you’re right: You’re the one who discovered me. You did play some part in freeing me.” Aaravos closed the distance between them again, his nose nearly touching Viren’s, his eyes almost too close to focus on. “And there’s something else, too. You killed the most powerful creature in the world. _You._ A human. You slayed Avizandum. Your magic, even before my help, surpassed the capabilities of any of your kind.” Aaravos paused, considering. “I like that.”

It was Viren’s turn to raise an eyebrow. 

“It sounds like I should be more than sufficient for you, then,” Viren said.

Aaravos exhaled. He smelled like spices and deep, cold magic. “You know what I want,” he said lowly, lifting his hand but not quite touching Viren’s cheek. The hairs on the back of Viren’s neck prickled.

“To conquer Xadia,” Viren said.

Aaravos rolled his eyes.

“This is what I mean by ‘insufficient,’” Aaravos said. “Are you creative enough? Daring enough? Because you know what I want. Not out _there.”_ He pointed, outside the cave, the forest, the country, the world. “In _here._ This cave.” His eyes lowered. “Those hands...”

Viren’s heart lodged in his throat, making it hard to swallow. He stood very, very still.

“But would you really want it, too? That give-and-take?” Aaravos frowned. “Otherwise, it wouldn’t be satisfying for either of us. It wouldn’t be...what I want.”

When Aaravos’s bug had spoken in Viren’s ear, Aaravos’s voice had had an overwhelming effect on his body. Every nerve in his right ear prickled, becoming so sensitive to each lilt and dip of that damnably silky voice.

The effect of having Aaravos in front of him, hearing him with two ears, his voice echoing throughout the cave, _smelling_ him and feeling the heat emanate from his body... All that sensitivity was cranked up tenfold—a hundredfold, Viren’s body thrumming with some undefined anticipation.

“You’re concerned I don’t actually want to give what I’m offering,” Viren said. Still not sure, entirely, of what he _was_ offering. To touch Aaravos, obviously, but how?

“That’s the gist of it,” Aaravos said. And even those five small words, the way his lips parted...

Viren swallowed. “Your concern is based on inaccurate assumptions. Consider it immaterial.”

Aaravos looked down at him, eyes glinting.

“Prove it,” he said.


	2. The Kiss of a Startouch Elf

_“Prove it.”_

“No,” Viren said.

Aaravos looked unsurprised but annoyed. He parted his lips, and Viren interrupted him before he could vocalize whatever insult or jibe was on his mind.

“Not while you’re looking down at me,” Viren said, eye level with Aaravos’s chin. “I want you to know your place.”

An old friend had said that to Viren not very long ago. How different things were now.

“My place?” Aaravos sounded amused.

“Yes,” Viren said. “On your knees.”

The elf’s eyes flashed, unreadable. Regardless, he chose to indulge Viren, and Viren was annoyed by how much it seemed like Aaravos’s _choice,_ like he still held all the cards.

Still, he was undeniably beautiful from this angle. Viren was amused to find he’d conjured a plush, star-patterned rug upon which to kneel. How long did he think he’d be spending on his knees?

Viren reached out, tracing a single finger along the curve of Aaravos’s delicately carved cheekbone. Aaravos stilled, eyes closing like all of his attention was on the single point where Viren’s finger met his skin.

Viren reached out and tucked a lock of snowy hair behind Aaravos’s ear. Aaravos sighed, possibly from impatience. He was hard to read, and that made this entire situation feel dangerous. Nevertheless, Viren glossed his fingers along Aaravos’s earlobe, as lightly as he could. Elvish features were under normal circumstances unappealing to Viren, but he didn’t mind Aaravos’s pointed ears, his four fingers; it seemed right that he should look different from Viren, a reminder that he was unknowable.

Viren graduated from the pad of a single finger to his whole hand, and stroked Aaravos’s hair outright, careful to avoid his horns. He scratched from the crown of Aaravos’s head down to the back of his neck.

Aaravos parted his eyelids, exhaling deeply. “You have no idea,” he said in his mellifluous voice. “You can’t imagine how good that feels.”

 _Oh._ Viren hadn’t expected this to be so easy. He realized only now how badly he had wanted to please Aaravos, even as he wanted Aaravos on his knees.

“Don’t stop,” Aaravos said, but it was harder when he was looking at Viren. Viren paused, unsure of what to do, and two hands suddenly yanked him to his knees.

They were eye-to-eye. Yes. This was better.

“Don’t move,” Viren ordered, and Aaravos made a show of obeying, becoming stiller than any human could manage, a teasing smile itching at his lips.

 _Are you daring enough?_ Aaravos had asked. That was an insult. Viren had always been the most daring of anyone in King Harrow’s court.

He leaned forward and brushed his lips against Aaravos’s. Aaravos didn’t kiss back, but the way his lips parted, his eyes widened with unconcealed surprise, was reward enough for Viren. His mouth grazed the edge of Aaravos’s lips, then pressed butterfly kisses along his jaw.

Aaravos gasped, his head falling back against the cave wall—no, a wall of cushions, now, a magnificent canopy of blankets and pillows. His magic was so graceful that Viren missed the conjuring, but the point got across anyway: _Keep going._

Viren pressed Aaravos back against the cushions so that Viren could balance on Aaravos’s lap, his thighs hugging either side of Aaravos’s torso. He grabbed Aaravos’s wrists, enjoying the feeling of control it gave him when Aaravos didn’t fight back. With the elf’s throat exposed, it was easy to kiss, Viren’s tongue darting out in small, quick licks. Aaravos’s breaths grew more ragged. His blue-toned skin was inhumanly warm, heating rapidly when Viren sucked at the hollow just above Aaravos’s clavicle.

Viren leaned back, his mouth full of Aaravos’s warmth. The star-freckles on Aaravos’s skin were flashing, the marking on his chest glowing hot. His own grasp around Aaravos’s wrists had loosened while he kissed him, so now it was merely like they were holding hands. How touching.

Viren let him go.

“Has that satisfied you?” he asked, the indifference in his tone at odds with his own hammering heartbeat.

Aaravos’s eyes narrowed and a low laugh escaped his throat.

“Satisfied me? After all these years?” He was on Viren like a wildcat, fast and lithe, so that Viren was on his back before he registered it, sinking into Aaravos’s damnable pillow bed. “After all these _centuries,_ Viren, that I have been alone? You have offered me your fingers and lips and breath for mere minutes and you want to know if I am _satisfied?”_

 _I would guess that’s a no, then,_ Viren wanted to say sarcastically, but before he could speak he was suddenly gagged, a silk ribbon balled between his lips. His arms whipped behind his back without his will directing them, and smooth, cold cloth magically knotted his wrists together. Then the world went black, a ribbon tied over his eyes. The last image in his mind’s eye was Aaravos looking down at him with blazing eyes.

Viren jerked, trying to shout through the cloth. Aaravos’s hands brushed his shoulders and Viren kicked out, kneeing Aaravos in the stomach.

To his relief, the gag was pulled from his mouth, although the blindfold kept him in darkness.

“What’s _wrong_ with you?” Aaravos said, sounding affronted.

“I’ll kill you!” Viren said. “You can’t betray me—”

Aaravos’s low chuckle sounded, more of a purr than anything else.

“Is this what you think betrayal looks like? I’m making you _feel_ good, Viren.” Aaravos’s voice sounded directly in his right ear, reminding him of when they’d first met, that assuring presence of Aaravos’s caterpillar. Viren calmed despite himself. “This is my _submission_ to you.”

It was remarkable how Aaravos’s submission and service always seemed to push Viren far out of his comfort zone. What was even more remarkable was how he never objected for more than a moment; the slightest assurance from Aaravos, no matter how perfunctory or nonsensical, always resulted in Viren’s unreserved compliance.

“Keep the gag off,” was Viren’s last half-objection.

“Mmm. The better to hear you,” Aaravos purred in his ear. And then his lips found Viren’s neck.

He kissed Viren precisely where Viren had kissed him, as though to repay the deed. Pleasure shot down Viren’s body, and he hissed in his effort not to moan. A few more kisses along his shoulders, and then Viren heard the unmistakable sound of a rune being drawn in the air. Light flashed from behind his blindfold, and he braced himself.

His robe melted off him, the cold, clean air of the cave caressing his skin. He jerked, shocked by the sudden exposure, but it didn’t feel wrong. His cock was still covered, his underclothing intact, although his erection was so hard and insistent that he was certain it would soon press past the band that imprisoned it.

Then Aaravos was on top of him, and Viren was pleased to feel his bare arms and chest; it seemed Aaravos had freed himself from the top of his cloak, bare down to his hips. His hands stroked down Viren’s chest, tangling through his hair, and then his lips found Viren’s.

He kissed more passionately than Viren had anticipated, his tongue brushing against Viren’s, seeking entrance. Viren parted his lips, and for the first time he was unable to conceal a keen of pleasure as Aaravos found his way inside him. Viren wriggled against the silk rope that bound his wrists, not from a desire to escape but from a need to press Aaravos closer.

Then the pleasure expanded. Aaravos hummed, exhaled into Viren’s mouth, and the sparks of sensation that played against Viren’s tongue buzzed into his throat, spreading downward. It burned and tingled in Viren’s chest, swirled in his belly, prickly and warm and electric. He moaned, shivering hard, unable to process such a foreign sensation. When it reached his cock, as though stroking it from _the inside,_ he ripped away from Aaravos’s kiss, gasping.

“What are you doing to me?” he panted.

“You didn’t like it? I’m wounded,” Aaravos teased.

“What was it?” Viren demanded.

“The kiss of a startouch elf.” A single finger stroked Viren’s cheekbone, then lifted his blindfold just enough for Viren to see. “Look.”

Viren looked down, horrified by how flushed his skin was, how his chest expanded with every pant, betraying the enormity of his arousal. But then he saw: Just beneath his skin were faint, flickering lights like tiny stars. That feeling of expanding pleasure within him wasn’t just his imagination—it was visible, literal, incandescent. It was _beautiful._ He watched in awe for a moment. This wasn’t a human thing; this was mysterious and ethereal, all Aaravos. But it was _Viren’s_ skin made luminous, and it amazed him. He had never considered his own body pleasing before. It was just another tool. His magic aged and hurt and uglified him; it had never once made him beautiful.

He looked up at Aaravos, feeling utterly helpless. He couldn’t decide which he wanted more: to not beg, or to be kissed again.

Mercifully, Aaravos didn’t make him choose. He pressed Viren back down against the pillows, straddling him.

“It feels good, doesn’t it?” Aaravos spoke right in his ear, breath hot against his skin. “It feels good to me, too. There is no sensation I like more than being inside you, Viren. From the moment you let me—from the moment you bled for me and connected us, I needed to be in you. In your ear, your mouth—any way I could. But now… This is so much…sweeter…”

He captured Viren’s lips again. Even though Viren was expecting the star-electric sensation, he realized immediately that he could never truly be ready for it. It was too overwhelming and strange. It felt like Aaravos had a hundred hands all sweeping inside him, finding every possible crevice where pleasure could be stroked and wrought to life.

Viren writhed in his struggle to contain it. It was too much pleasure for one body, too difficult to try to bottle it in a single vessel. Aaravos brought him deeper into the kiss. Viren felt like his lips were a keyhole and he was letting himself be unlocked. There was no door within him that Aaravos could not swing wide open.

The feeling reached his cock again. Viren writhed, desperate for air, but Aaravos’s lips were sealed to his. The feeling burned—a spark—fire—incendiary—his cock twitching desperately—

He wretched away, gasping like he was surfacing from deep underwater.

“Please,” he said. “I—I need you to touch—in the normal way. I—I’m human,” he reminded him reluctantly. Implicit in the words were _I’m only human._

“I need that, too,” Aaravos said. “To touch—to feel. I want to be inside you in every way I can.”

He reached out and, with a graceful flicker of his hands, Viren’s last scrap of clothing disappeared. Aaravos wrapped his hand around Viren’s cock and stroked. The burning dissipated somewhat as a more typical kind of pleasure prickled up his length, coiling inside him.

“Is that better?” Aaravos asked.

“Y-yes,” Viren said shakily. The stars beneath his skin cooled, glowed less fiercely now, and he was disappointed even as he was relieved.

As suddenly as they’d appeared, the ropes that bound Viren’s wrists dissolved. The blindfold vanished, too, and arousal shot through Viren anew at the sight of Aaravos’s midnight-blue hand around his member.

“Here,” Aaravos commanded. He shifted so that he was leaning back, supported by his conjured bed of cushions, and he gestured for Viren to sit in his lap.

Viren almost objected. He felt too vulnerable and untrusting. But then Aaravos snapped his fingers, and his own clothing was gone. He wrapped his hand around his cock, which pulsed hard, the darkest shade of blue, and gestured again with his other hand for Viren to sit.

It was maddening that Aaravos shouldn’t seem an iota more vulnerable when entirely nude. He dripped heavy-lidded _power._ Viren wanted even an ounce of that power.

He climbed atop Aaravos, kissing his ear, his temple, his jaw, but careful to avoid his overwhelming lips. Aaravos leaned forward to speak directly in his ear, and it dawned on Viren that maybe Aaravos enjoyed that first intimacy they’d ever had, the closeness of Aaravos’s voice, as much as Viren did.

“Open yourself to me,” Aaravos commanded. When his fingers found Viren’s hole, circling and teasing, Viren gasped and shuddered. No one had ever touched there except King Harrow, and that had been ages ago.

“Slowly,” Viren said, but suddenly Aaravos’s fingers were impossibly, magically slick. When he slid inside it was painless; the possibility of pain was quickly forgotten as Aaravos worked him from the inside out.

Viren began to thrust against Aaravos instinctively. He knew from his time with King Harrow that it was impossible to hold back his own gasps now. Indeed, Aaravos moved perfectly, elegantly, tickling and scissoring and fucking until Viren managed to cry out, “P-please.”

Was that begging? No, that was just one word. It didn’t count.

“Mmm,” Aaravos assented. Their bodies coordinated wordlessly, the head of Aaravos’s cock pressing against Viren’s hole until Viren plunged down on it, groaning at the welcome intrusion.

Aaravos’s deep moan, and the way his skin glittered frantically, was enormously validating. Viren balanced himself on Aaravos, his arms wrapped around Aaravos’s shoulders, as he started to ride him, setting his own rhythm. Aaravos’s cock pulsed deep inside him, and _thank heavens_ humans and elves were created for the same sort of fucking, were similar enough for this to even be possible.

He kissed Aaravos again, hungry for that strange star-electricity, enjoying the way he cut off Aaravos’s moan when their mouths crushed together. That was a modicum of power, the ability to—

Aaravos grabbed the back of his head, fingers twisting into his hair, tongue plunging inside him like Aaravos wanted to consume him. Viren moaned, the sound stifled against Aaravos’s mouth. Aaravos thrust his hips, taking over entirely, and all at once Viren couldn’t think, coherency dissipating entirely. There was only heat—only stars—-the cosmos boiling behind his eyelids, flashes of nebula, galactical clouds of pink and azure and violet glowing like the heavens—

Viren couldn’t stand it, too vast, too infinite, _he was only human,_ a vessel unable to contain all this pleasure without exploding—

“F-Fuck—” Viren ripped away, squeezing his eyes shut, as both their bodies shone with the stars, filling the cave with divine light. Aaravos’s hand wrapped around his cock, pumping hard, and it only took a few seconds before Viren burst, come spurting. He gasped with the relief of that release, his own come splattering against his chest and speckling his lips. Then Aaravos clung to him as he thrust up into Viren, crying, “I’m—still _in you—_ ”

Viren knew he didn’t just mean his cock was inside him. Aaravos’s spirit, or soul, or _something,_ was in Viren, setting his skin alight, pulsing and jubilant with its own pleasure. Viren watched, awed, as Aaravos finally came. His come was hot inside Viren, and his lips parted beautifully as he cried out.

And all at once it was over. Ecstasy—then release. Aaravos collapsed against the pillows, his softening cock still inside Viren. Viren winced a little, sensitive, and then lifted himself very carefully off of Aaravos, feeling a little regretful as he was suddenly empty.

Come spilled from his hole, last droplets leaking down Aaravos’s cock. Viren’s eyes widened. It didn’t look like human come at all. It was—like stardust, glittering a myriad of colors, the liquid heavens.

Viren wanted to gasp in horror, some of his old elf prejudices coming back to him. But he had no energy. He dropped, exhausted, into the nest of pillows and blankets, his head resting unintentionally on Aaravos’s spread arm. They weren’t cuddling, quite.

“Don’t deprive me of any part of this,” Aaravos demanded.

Right. Centuries of isolation.

Viren curled up against him, sighing.

“You...broke me down,” he said, his desire mingling with self-disgust and a growing sense of shame. “You...reduced me to this…” He gestured to his own boneless form, elvish come dripping between his legs.

“No, Viren,” Aaravos said, shifting just slightly so that he could press a kiss to Viren’s brow. Even after all they’d done, it was incredibly intimate. “I built you up to this.”

His fingers skittered against Viren’s skin, ticklish, tracing the places where faint stars still echoed light beneath Viren’s skin. Viren sighed, closing his eyes. It seemed no matter how hard he tried he gave more and more of himself to the startouch elf.


	3. Power Games

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which I realize this story is going to be like maybe seven chapters instead of three.

It was a clear night with a new moon, and Aaravos was missing. Viren didn’t care, of course, although it would have been nice to have his servant around to help him collect the wilted moonberry blossoms that could only be gathered for spell work on a pitch black night. He picked what he could in the darkness of the woods. When his vial of crushed blossoms was sufficiently replenished, he pocketed it and left the forest.

He’d fully intended to return to the cave, but over the cave’s entrance was a hill of grass and wildflowers that suddenly called to him. He had an instinct for magic and tended to follow it; there might be something rare and valuable on the hilltop that he ought to acquire.

He was grateful for the knee-length leather boots Aaravos had conjured him, their spiked soles making it a quick climb up the hill. The closer he got, the more drawn he felt; there was something _very_ important here.

A cool breeze blew, and just a few meters away on the hill’s peak Aaravos’s white hair stood out in stark contrast to the night. The elf’s ears pricked at the sound of Viren’s footfalls and he turned around. In the darkness his eyes shone oddly, like a cat’s.

“I didn’t realize you were here,” Viren said stiffly. It had been several days since Aaravos had emerged into the world, newly freed. Viren had wanted space after...what had happened, and Aaravos had largely provided it.

“You knew,” Aaravos contradicted mildly, and patted the grass beside himself before laying back down. “You wouldn't have come all the way up here otherwise.”

Viren didn’t bother arguing. He lie beside him instead and looked up at the sky. He supposed it made sense that a startouch elf would be drawn to stargazing.

Aaravos’s blue finger appeared in his line of sight. It drew a glowing rune in the air, which Viren was quick to memorize the shape of. Aaravos murmured, _“Proxima astra.”_

A celestial tableau opened up before them. Every cloud dissolved from view, and the sky was drenched with stars. Viren had never seen anything like it; the heavens were hugging the earth like they were trying to get closer to the startouch elf who mastered them. For a moment Viren loathed his human, earth-anchored form: The world was cast in pallor compared to this, the Milky Way gleaming amidst a tapestry twined with indigo and navy, so many _colors,_ all so close it seemed perfectly possible to touch them.

“My prison kept me from the stars.” Aaravos’s voice sounded in a rasp. “Without them I...was limited in my powers.”

“You were limited in your powers,” Viren repeated wryly. He remembered when Aaravos’s magic had briefly flowed through his own veins, when he’d fought the palace guards. That strength had gone far beyond anything Viren had ever even conceived of up to that point. “Everything we’ve done together—that was you acting with _limited_ capabilities?”

“I never would have let that little moonshadow elf hurt you if I had had all of my predictive powers.” Aaravos was still looking at the stars, but Viren was looking at Aaravos.

“Let her kill me,” Viren corrected. “That elf killed me.”

Aaravos exhaled. A long moment passed.

“You never have to worry about your daughter’s safety,” Aaravos said. “I will protect her. I am thoroughly in her debt.”

“We don’t even know where she is right now,” Viren reminded him.

“She’s sleeping, three miles west,” Aaravos pointed, “after having eaten a surprisingly delicious roasted rabbit and restocked her spell supplies with some new moon herbs.”

Viren was silent with surprise.

“I will keep her safe,” Aaravos said, “as she kept you for me.”

There was a dip in his voice— _for me_ —and a shift in the air. He pushed himself up on his elbow, gazing down at Viren, blocking out Viren’s view of the stars. His dark hand rose in the air, magic at his fingertips.

Viren shot out his arm, wrapping his hand around Aaravos’s wrist.

“Don’t,” he said. He knew what Aaravos was about to do because his clothes suddenly felt lighter, like they were about to fade away. “You cannot simply—undress—me whenever you want.” He didn’t know what else to call the magic Aaravos had been about to perform.

Aaravos cocked his head, strands of his white hair brushing against Viren’s chest. Viren’s heart beat skyrocketed.

“Why not?” Aaravos said, almost petulantly.

“Because—you—” Viren struggled. “You need to _ask_ first.”

“I never asked for your permission before,” Aaravos pointed out. “Your blood, your ear, your eye, your body...you gave it all to me, even after you knew I was a prisoner.”

Viren ignored the heat rising to his cheeks. “That was different,” he said. “You were trapped in the mirror, incorporeal, and our communications were limited.”

Aaravos rolled his eyes. “Technicalities. I _know_ you want it. I can _feel_ you wanting it.” To Viren’s horror he stroked Viren’s cheek with a single finger, following the precise flow of heat that was blooming across Viren’s skin. “It’s inefficient to ask if I already know the answer.”

“You ask because I’m _telling_ you to ask,” Viren said, pleased when his tone sounded appropriately authoritative.

Aaravos was silent for a moment. Then, voice curling with sarcasm, “May I kiss you?”

Viren didn’t appreciate the joking tone, but he supposed this was a step in the right direction. Determined to play whatever role he could in teaching the elf good manners, he said, “You may.”

Aaravos leaned forward, his lips brushing Viren’s enticingly. There was the faintest prickle, a spark between them, promising that heady, enchanted pleasure of Aaravos’s elvish kiss. Before he kissed Viren properly, though, he said, “And may I cup your cheek?”

Viren glared at him. “Yes, of course.”

“And may I please tease my fingers through your hair?”

“Aara—”

“And may I pretty please lick—"

“Shut _up,”_ Viren growled, grabbing the back of Aaravos’s head and kissing him properly. He was rewarded immediately with a burst of stars in his mouth—at least that was how it felt, like the glowing light from the sky was heating up his tongue and throat, spreading through his body, making his _brain_ tingle. God, just one kiss from this elf was so much more than anything Lissa or Harrow had ever given him. In comparison, his ex-wife, or even _a king,_ was nothing—

Aaravos broke away.

“Don’t think about your ex-lovers when you’re kissing me,” he hissed. _“That_ is truly bad manners, Viren.”

Viren stilled.

A feeling coiled in his stomach. He tried to suppress it.

“You were reading my thoughts,” he said slowly, not believing it even as he said it.

Aaravos’s expression confirmed it.

Mortification washed over him—quickly replaced by anger.

“How _dare_ you,” he spat.

Aaravos’s eyes widened. The innocence of that expression—unexpected rejection— _hurt,_ was it?—took Viren aback.

“That’s the kiss of a startouch elf,” Aaravos said woundedly. “It’s a connection.”

It was so obvious that Aaravos hadn’t meant to do anything wrong that Viren’s anger melted away. He just shook his head, rubbing his temples. There was a reason Aaravos had been imprisoned, of course. It wasn’t because he had been nice and polite and kept to himself. He’d been powerful and chaotic. Viren had, at least subconsciously, known for a long time that he was helping to free him. He had wanted him freed—but that meant he needed to be up to the task of handling Aaravos. He was slippery, invasive, and terrifyingly powerful even when he didn’t mean to be.

To simply...crawl into another person’s thoughts like that, just by kissing them? It was...

Viren sighed.

“No more elvish kissing for now,” he said finally.

“For now,” Aaravos said cautiously, almost as a question. Viren did nothing to reassure him; it was too nice to hear him slightly off balance for once. After a moment Aaravos said, “This is...okay?”

He leaned forward to demonstrate, planting soft kisses up Viren’s neck, his exhalations making Viren’s skin tingle pleasantly.

“Yes,” Viren breathed.

All of Aaravos’s teasing was gone. Viren didn’t know why or how, quite, but it felt like he had some kind of upper hand for the first time—he just wasn’t sure what had given him it or how long it would last. He basked in it, though, as Aaravos kissed him with a hesitancy that was almost sweet.

Aaravos’s hands brushed up Viren’s chest, his fingers curling against the collar at Viren’s throat. He fingered at the laces that crossed up Viren’s shirt and moaned in sudden frustration.

“Let me _banish_ your clothes,” he said.

“You mean vanish?” Viren said, stalling for the simple pleasure of witnessing Aaravos’s growing annoyance.

“Make them _vanish,_ yes,” Aaravos said. “Banish to another dimension...” He kissed Viren’s ear, his temple. “Horrible clothes...” He pressed down against Viren’s chest, so that Viren was lying flat against the grass as Aaravos straddled him. “Horrible clothes _clothing_ you.” Aaravos growled. “They need to be punished for the crime of clothing you.”

It was slightly terrifying to have a startouch elf on top of you when his gaze simmered with heated frustration. Viren wondered if having the upper hand was maybe more dangerous than otherwise. Aaravos was looking down at him too intensely...

At his lips. He was gazing at Viren’s lips like it was taking all of his will power not to kiss them.

Was that what all of this was about, then? It truly pained him so much to be deprived of his startouch kisses?

“You may unclothe me,” Viren said, and his tunic and cloak vanished almost before he finished his sentence, leaving only his trousers and boots.

Aaravos pressed his lips to Viren’s chin. Viren waited patiently, curious about what the elf would do—would he go against Viren’s command and kiss his lips anyway?

The elf seemed to be wrestling with that question himself. He grazed kisses along Viren’s jaw, his cheeks, the edges of his lips. When he leaned down over Viren, their chests touching, Viren was surprised to feel Aaravos’s clothed cock rock hard against his thigh.

Aaravos lifted Viren’s arm suddenly, pressing his nose into the hollow of Viren’s underarm. He took in a whiff of him, and Viren became suddenly self-conscious of his own sweat and odor.

But Aaravos didn’t seem to mind it.

“Do you know how often I wondered?” Aaravos mused. “What you smelled like... What you tasted like...”

He licked Viren’s underarm, then tongued at Viren’s neck. Viren moaned, wrapping his arms around Aaravos’s back.

Aaravos’s voice sounded right against his ear: “It was _agonizing._ To be trapped in that stale mirror world, everything around me a pale reflection. My senses _cut off_ so that you were nothing but a two-dimensional image. I _wanted you.”_ He nipped Viren’s earlobe and Viren shuddered, his nerves alight. Aaravos rubbed his face into Viren’s hair, inhaling.

Viren had not known. He had never once imagined that Aaravos would think such things. The degree of curiosity he had shown in Viren had been flattering and surprising; Viren hadn’t considered the possibility that Aaravos’s desire ran far deeper.

Aaravos kissed him frantically, from his temple to his jaw to his neck, mouthing at his chest until he groaned in frustration.

He buried his face into the crook of Viren’s neck.

“You’re killing me,” he whimpered.

“Because you can’t kiss my lips?” Viren asked, amused despite himself. He played idly with Aaravos’s hair until Aaravos looked up at him, stone silent and eyes blazing.

They gazed at each other for a long moment, heat emanating off of Aaravos. Everything about his expression answered Viren’s question: _Yes._

For whatever reason, this was a serious thing to the elf. Viren felt an unexpected lurch of sympathy, although it wasn’t enough to make him want to let Aaravos read his mind.

“Take off your clothes,” Viren said. “All of them. And get on your back.”

Aaravos complied immediately, waving his hand so that his cloak of stars and trousers vanished. Viren sat up and just took in the sight of Aaravos for a moment: His slim figure, his cock hard and upright between his legs, his hair blowing slightly in the breeze.

Viren cupped Aaravos’s face and said sternly, “Do _not_ kiss me back.”

Aaravos remained obediently still as Viren kissed his lips. Only a stifled moan left his throat. Viren stroked his arms, the stars on Aaravos’s biceps shimmering pleasingly as Viren’s fingers brushed them. Viren leaned down, empowered by Aaravos’s compliance, and tongued at Aaravos’s nipple.

Aaravos hissed, fist grasping Viren’s hair in a wordless plea for more. Viren shoved his hand away and straddled him instead, kissing and sucking at his nipples. The keen from Aaravos’s lips went straight to Viren’s cock—and Aaravos’s own cock bobbed against Viren’s bare skin, wetting it with hot precome.

Viren mouthed down Aaravos’s stomach, his tongue circling the elf’s belly button. He pressed his nose into Aaravos’s groin. A delicious, intimate scent filled his nostrils.

He worked himself farther down, getting on his elbows and rubbing his face between Aaravos’s thighs. Aaravos sat up, supporting himself on the backs of his hands. His thighs clenched with anticipation, and Viren kissed them, realizing as he did so that he was smiling.

This felt _good._ He hadn’t felt this emotion in years, and he paused to simply observe it. It was something light and shameless, made simply for pleasure. What was it exactly?

Happiness.

He was happy. He had not had sex untinged by shame or manipulation or power struggles since his ex-wife had left him and Harrow had married Sarai. It had been more than ten years since he’d simply enjoyed the body of another.

A bubbling affection for Aaravos spilled over him, but he wasn’t interested in analyzing it right now. He was grateful the elf couldn’t read his mind at the moment. He looked up, making certain Aaravos was watching him, as he popped Aaravos’s cock between his lips.

“Ahh...” Aaravos breathed. “That’s...”

He gasped, his head swinging back. Viren sucked and stroked. With his other hand he played with Aaravos's balls. It’d been ages since he’d had a cock in his mouth, and he fucking loved it, its reassuring weight against his tongue. He reached out, glossing his fingers over Aaravos’s pecs as he continued sucking. He pinched Aaravos’s nipples and was rewarded by Aaravos crying out, thrusting helplessly into Viren’s mouth.

Viren swirled his tongue around the sensitive head of Aaravos’s cock, moaning himself as he tasted salty precome. He started stroking hard and fast as he felt all of Aaravos’s muscles tense. He commanded, “Come, now.”

Aaravos released a strangled cry, shockingly loud, waking dark birds who flew, startled, from the trees nearby. The cry was too full of angst to be orgasmic. Viren looked up, confused.

Aaravos’s hair was disheveled, a few short locks plastered to his damp forehead. He was biting his lip so hard he must have split his own skin, and his nails were digging into the dirt. Still, he wasn’t coming.

Viren spat on Aaravos’s cock, sitting up and squeezing him hard. Aaravos cried out again, his head falling back. Viren watched in rising bewilderment as Aaravos panted, his body overcome with tremors.

“Please,” Aaravos quaked, vulnerability and need going completely undisguised. But Viren didn’t understand—he was giving Aaravos everything, wasn’t holding back on his pleasure at all.

Aaravos sobbed out, his cock pulsing hot in Viren’s hand. His lips parted, a drop of blood swelling from his abused bottom lip. Dear lord—it was like he was _breaking_ the elf, like Aaravos needed more than anything to come, was seconds away, but for some reason _couldn’t—_

It clicked.

Viren released his cock, and Aaravos sat up, gasping raggedly. There were _tears_ in his eyes—he was _sobbing._

“You can’t come until we kiss,” Viren said. “You need the startouch kiss to release you.”

Their eyes met, and the tears in Aaravos’s eyes were the only answer Viren needed.

 _That_ was why the kiss mattered so much to Aaravos. Viren saw it so clearly now: Aaravos was worked up, on the brink of an orgasm he just couldn’t quite reach. His eyes shone with naked hunger, silently pleading. And the only reason he wasn’t begging with words was because he was too far gone, was reduced to this urgent, unmet need. Viren could do anything—he could suck Aaravos for hours, torturing him; he could fuck Aaravos into submission. Aaravos would let Viren do whatever he wanted in this state.

Viren held the cards. He held them. For the first time, the power was _his._

He sat up, fixing his hair with his fingers.

Aaravos whimpered, so needy for his touch, any kind of touch. He looked up at Viren with big, vulnerable eyes.

Viren cupped his cheek, looking down at him. He brushed his lips against Aaravos’s earlobe, and Aaravos cried out like it was his cock Viren was teasing.

Viren spoke directly into his ear, as Aaravos had done to him so many times before. He whispered, “I will never, ever kiss you again, elf.”

He patted Aaravos’s head and stood up, making his way back down the hill.


	4. Unbroken

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which these assholes are such assholes.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much for the comments, everyone. They keep me warm on these cold summer nights. <3
> 
> And sorry for typos.

Aaravos did not return to the cave for three days. Viren had expected as much and did not waste time fretting over whether he would come back. Although he had none of his magical tomes with him, Claudia had managed to bring his staff back from the battlefield. He spent his days experimenting in the cave and forests, reminding himself that he was a dark mage— _the_ most powerful dark mage in all the kingdoms, a title he’d claimed decades before meeting Aaravos.

He was grinding down rare elvish _occultatum_ leaves with a makeshift pestle, shredded leaves sticking underneath his fingernails, when Aaravos finally appeared at the entrance of the cave, silently waiting.

“Aaravos,” Viren acknowledged softly.

He heard the rustling of Aaravos’s cloak and looked over his shoulder. Aaravos was prostrating himself before Viren, his nose touching the ground.

Viren stood. “Speak."

“I have mulled it over," Aaravos addressed Viren’s shoes, "and I realize now that the nature of our relationship has changed by the very fact of my being freed. You don’t trust me.”

Viren had never trusted him, but he was curious enough about what point Aaravos was getting at that he didn’t interrupt him.

“You doubt my desire to serve you. But...” Aaravos looked up finally, making eye contact briefly before casting his gaze downward again. “I am your servant, Viren. I am here to do your bidding.”

“I thought I wasn’t a king anymore,” Viren snarled. “I am ‘insufficient for your needs.’”

Aaravos said only, “I await your command.”

Viren was not an idiot. He had always known that Aaravos’s servitude was entirely voluntary and therefore volatile. He recognized the danger and yet nevertheless relished that superficial feeling of power—just having the attention of someone as powerful as Aaravos was a rush.

“Very well,” Viren said. “From now on you will refer to me as ‘Master’ or ‘Master Viren.’”

“My Master,” Aaravos said softly.

Viren had to suppress a smile. There was such a difference between _Master_ and _my Master,_ the latter inherently possessive. Did Aaravos think Viren couldn’t see it? How impossible it was for a creature like Aaravos to submit to anyone or anything—even to the heavens themselves?

But still. How good it felt to have him here, bowing down.

Viren stepped forward and stroked Aaravos’s hair. Aaravos’s breathing slowed, his eyes slitted like a cat’s.

“Sit up,” Viren ordered. Aaravos went to his knees. “Tell me your plan.”

The elf said nothing, face unreadable.

“How foolish do you think I am, Aaravos? You obviously have a plan.”

No response.

“I saw you,” Viren said angrily. “You were up on the hill the past two nights, reading the stars. Predicting the future? Or figuring out how to shape it?”

Aaravos’s lips went thin.

“I was reading the stars,” he said shortly. “I was reading _your_ stars, to see your loyalty. I wanted to know whether or not I can trust you.”

“Since you can’t read my mind now?” Viren said. Aaravos looked only bitter, clearly silent because the words on his mind were nothing a self-professed servant would ever utter.

“Well?” Viren said impatiently. “What did your stars tell you about me?”

“Nothing.” Aaravos glowered. “They were undecided.”

“Ah,” said Viren. “As am I.” He paced around Aaravos. “I suppose both your stars and I realize that I can’t possibly trust you if you keep your plans from me.”

Not knowing Aaravos’s plans hadn’t bothered Viren before. When he’d been crowned king of Katolis, when he’d led the armies of all the kingdoms, he had been so euphoric in his own power that he hadn’t cared at all about Aaravos’s endgame. And in that willful blindness he had lost himself. Lost his _son._ Never again.

“Tell me who your next vessel will be,” Viren said.

“Vessel? I have no need anymore,” Aaravos said. “Now that I am freed, I need only a human partner to help persuade the human kingdoms.”

“And that human will be?”

“You.”

“Liar!” Viren struck the back of Aaravos’s head. Aaravos spun around, glaring up at him, rubbing the spot where he had hit.

“I never lie,” Aaravos said crossly.

“You told me I am insufficient,” Viren said. “That you would have another with more power.”

“I said I _could_ have another. Not that I would.” Aaravos lowered his gaze. “And I decided that it must be you.”

“How flattering,” Viren said dryly, ignoring that part of him _was_ flattered, ignoring that moments ago he had felt irrational jealousy over whatever human Aaravos was planning to victimize next. “What is it that we’ll do as _partners,_ then?”

“Conquer Xadia,” Aaravos said simply. “Re-conquer Katolis. Rule the human kingdoms and rid the world of elves and dragons.”

"And how do you plan for us to accomplish this?”

Aaravos paused. Viren sighed a long-suffering sigh. “What kind of servant keeps this many secrets from his master?”

Aaravos frowned. “It’s all very...complicated.”

“You think I’m too stupid to understand.” He ignored the painful gnawing at his chest; this was an ugly possibility that he didn’t like to think about.

But Aaravos only wore a look of innocent surprise.

“Humans are not stupid,” he said. “It is not their fault if they don’t understand the plans of a startouch elf.”

“Ah, yes.” Viren rolled his eyes. “Forgive me. Your unfathomable superiority slipped my mind.”

Aaravos simply looked at him in maddening, neutral silence.

Viren clenched his fist. “You despise arrogance, yet you are the most arrogant creature I have ever encountered.”

“No. I have never judged humans as dragons and other elves have,” Viren said. “What is more arrogant than how others have tried to limit you, to give you an enslaved, un-magical existence? _I_ have always believed in the great potential of humankind—in your ability to transcend your natural form.”

“I surpassed what others deemed my natural limitations long before I met you,” Viren said. “I didn’t need your help to become something more.”

“I know.” Was it Viren’s imagination, or was there some faint admiration in Aaravos’s tone?

“Then you’ve run out of excuses, elf,” Viren said. “Tell. Me. Your. Plan.”

Aaravos sighed. “Very well. Do let me know if—or when—your lumbering human mind fails to keep up.”

He winked before Viren could hit him. And then he proceeded to tell Viren his plan.

* * * *

Step by step it unfolded, revealing an intricate tapestry of supreme beauty and elegance. There were so many moments of the future that hinged on predicting the actions of total strangers, and yet Aaravos outlined each player’s moves with total confidence. As he spoke, Viren made sure to process every word he uttered, to understand him more completely than he’d understood anything in his life. He _needed_ to keep up with Aaravos, to prove his own worth and intelligence.

At the same time, he slowly grasped one possible explanation for Aaravos’s habitual secretiveness. It was not for the same reasons a human might keep a secret, because he was hatching some nefarious betrayal, waiting to reveal Viren’s sacrificial death.

No. Communicating his thoughts exposed how inhuman he was. His mind was expansive beyond any mortal boundaries, his perspective one of cosmic proportions. This was not like a strategic chess game, where a great player could plan dozens of moves in advance. It was not even like being an excellent player and predicting an opponent’s moves before a single pawn was lifted. No—this was like understanding every chess game that had ever been played or would be played for all time, and seeing how each individual move wove into the greater picture until finally, at the end of it all...

“Five years hence, during the third night of that winter’s second blizzard, the last ruler of the elves will surrender and you will take the throne. The entire world will be at your command. You will be so very elated with your unchallenged power that you will permit me to startouch kiss you for as long and vigorously as I please,” Aaravos smiled, “and then, after three more decades of a long and stable reign, you will pass away in your sleep and your daughter will ascend to the throne. Any questions?”

Aaravos made it seem so obvious that Viren was meant for greatness, that this era in history was his. For one moment he allowed himself that fantasy—of him leading the world to a bright era of peace and a thriving human race, with Aaravos at his right hand, his omniscient advisor.

All at once, desire boiled so hot through his veins that Viren’s voice was caught in his throat. He could only look down at Aaravos, wanting every part of him, from the starry freckles on his cheeks to his damnably silky voice.

“Would you like me to repeat any parts, my Master?” Aaravos said. “I’m sure it was very difficult to grasp.”

Viren rolled his eyes.

“I’m going to fuck you now,” he said, reaching for his belt as Aaravos bowed.

* * * *

Afterward, when Viren was sated, he lay sweat-drenched and slightly breathless on the bed Aaravos had conjured. He was mostly dressed, having only unbuttoned his pants, but Aaravos was completely bare beside him, rock hard and unsatisfied. He curled up beside Viren and cupped his cheek, leaning in to kiss him.

Viren swatted him across the face.

“What do you think you’re doing?” he demanded.

Aaravos’s eyes flashed.

“I thought I might be permitted one kiss,” he said.

“You thought wrong.”

Aaravos sat up, true violence in his gaze. Viren stilled, wondering if he’d crossed some unspoken boundary, a cornered deer waiting for the wolf to strike.

“I have given you everything you asked for,” Aaravos said angrily. “I told you _everything._ Did I fail to _satisfy_ you in some way, my Master?”

Viren smiled. “I don’t think anything has ever satisfied me, but you’ve certainly come the closest.”

“I don’t understand how it benefits you to deny me my sole request. It is _one kiss,_ Viren.”

“Master,” Viren corrected immediately.

Aaravos’s eyes turned to ice.

“What is it?” Viren said. “Could it be you were only...playing at submission, in the hopes of getting what you wanted? How very predictable of you, Aaravos.”

Aaravos grabbed Viren’s wrists and slammed him against the bed. Viren grunted at the impact, momentarily winded.

“It is _you_ who should call me ‘Master,’” Aaravos spat, keeping Viren trapped as he struggled against Aaravos’s vice-like grip. “I will make you regret your insolence.”

Viren settled.

“Very well,” he said. “I’m curious. Give me your worst.”

“Gladly.” Aaravos yanked Viren out of the bed like he was trying to wrench his shoulders from his sockets. He kicked him down to his knees and shoved him back against the cave wall, iron shackles magically appearing to close around Viren’s wrists. They held him there, his arms trapped above his head.

Only a few weeks ago he had put an elf—Runaan, had it been?—in the same position. Viren looked up at Aaravos and smiled.

“Is this your worst?” he goaded.

“This is _unnecessary,”_ Aaravos said. “Why are you so opposed to one kiss?”

“My mind is my own,” Viren said angrily. “I have given you more than enough. You cannot—you cannot have _all_ of me.”

Aaravos grinned viciously. “We’ll see about that.”

* * * *

Viren’s arms quickly went numb, abused by the shackles and his own struggling. For once, Aaravos hadn’t magically disappeared Viren’s clothes. He’d instead used the knife he typically kept sheathed at his thigh to slice away Viren’s attire, tear by tear until Viren was nearly naked in tatters. He had not been precisely careful, and small cuts of red dappled Viren’s pale skin, little sparks of pain that tingled across his body.

“I like this very much,” Aaravos said, idly cutting through the last thin strip of cloth that held Viren’s ruined tunic together. All at once it fell to the ground, and Viren was left bare and bleeding.

“Taste me,” Aaravos ordered, his erection not having flagged a bit.

Viren parted his lips, entirely unsurprised when Aaravos thrust into him immediately. He stared up at Aaravos defiantly, determined not to cough or gag. He’d taken in Harrow enough times—he _enjoyed_ the feeling of a pulsing cock deep inside him, in his throat.

Aaravos grunted, his fingers in Viren’s hair. He closed his eyes as he mouth-fucked him, so Viren got to look up and watch him, taking pleasure in Aaravos’s pleasure. It was a bit funny, though, wasn’t it? All of this rage, this desire to dominate Viren, and who still held the cards?

He coughed suddenly, his chuckle getting caught in his throat. He couldn’t stop laughing, though—or trying to laugh, Aaravos’s cock very much in the way. Lightheadedness was just starting to hit him when Aaravos suddenly pulled out, a string of saliva beading from Viren’s lips to the head of Aaravos’s cock.

“What amuses you?” Aaravos demanded.

Viren smiled with wet lips, slightly breathless.

“You can fuck me however you like,” he said, “but we both know you can’t come.”

“That’s true,” Aaravos said carelessly. “But you can.”

* * * *

A fist around Viren’s cock, a fast, unlubricated handjob, made him come for the second time that night, hissing as he writhed against the cave wall. And then Aaravos was kissing and stroking him, then yanking his hair, flicking his nipples, all the flashes of pain and pleasure mingling until they were indistinguishable, every touch simply making Viren _want._

His cock couldn’t get hard again right away, though. So Aaravos stroked his own cock instead, ignoring Viren when Viren parted his lips in a silent request to suck. He went to his knees, kissing Viren’s ear and neck and shoulders, then biting him so hard Viren cried out. His skin must be blooming blue and purple where Aaravos’s teeth dug in. Aaravos stroked his own length as he cut into Viren’s back with his other hand, his nails scratching like claws down Viren’s body. Viren closed his eyes, images of bright red streaks flashing across his mind's eye.

“A-ah...There it is...” Aaravos breathed. Viren’s eyes shot open. He wondered for a quick moment whether Aaravos was coming after all. Would this all end so soon?

For a moment what he saw seemed to confirm this: Aaravos stroked himself, his hand painted with twilit-colored elvish come. Viren watched, transfixed by the sight, by Aaravos’s labored breathing, his beautiful muscles clenching, but then he realized: This wasn’t an orgasm; it was only that Aaravos was torturing himself just as mercilessly as he was Viren, his cock crying out for release.

Aaravos looked at him, holding up a come-drenched finger. “Would you like to taste? It’s a very useful ingredient in dark magic; perhaps I should bottle some for you.”

Viren _did_ want to taste, but he also wasn’t stupid.

“What will it do to me?” he asked.

“I’m not telling.” Aaravos smiled mischievously. “It’s your choice, if you want to find out.”

They both knew what Viren’s answer was—what his answer would always be, his curiosity his least resistible impulse.

“Mouth-fuck me,” Viren commanded from his chains.

Aaravos practically purred. “Of course, _my Master.”_

He didn’t, though. He stood up and stroked Viren’s hair, watching sadistically as Viren leaned forward, tonguing at Aaravos’s cock, struggling to get his mouth around its head properly. Viren was perfectly aware of how submissive he looked, mouthing at Aaravos’s length as the elf stood just a few inches too far away.

Finally Aaravos pressed forward, and Viren was able to take him in and suck, swallowing a little greedily when the first fresh, hot strip of come hit the back of his throat. It tasted _bright,_ pure magic.

Aaravos pulled out of him, rubbing his tip against Viren’s lips and chin, painting him in come. Viren didn’t try to lick himself clean; he had no idea what effect a startouch elf’s come would have, and didn’t want to accidentally overdose. It was perfectly possible it would act as some kind of elixir, allowing Aaravos to control or possess him. He may have just made a terrible mistake.

A moment passed, Aaravos watching carefully.

Then it kicked in.

“Aah,” Viren moaned. His tired cock went rock hard. “F-fuck...”

“You like it?” Aaravos teased.

“Mmm...” Viren wriggled against his chains. “Fuck, Aaravos. Touch...” He swallowed, his skin hot like he was feverish. He tried not to beg, some kernel of pride itching at him. Then he cast that aside, because he felt very, _very_ good, but if Aaravos didn’t fuck him in about five seconds he was going to feel _very_ bad. “Touch me.”

“Remember your manners,” Aaravos mocked. “Humans love their manners.”

 _“Please,”_ Viren pleaded. “Fuck me, _please._ Please fuck me, please fuck me, please fuck me—”

Aaravos groaned and waved his hand, and the chains vanished. Viren fell to the ground, his bloodless arms like jelly.

Aaravos assisted as he moaned helplessly. He pressed Viren’s face against the dirt floor. Then Aaravos propped up his hips, squeezing and spanking his ass as Viren shifted so that his hole was exposed to the cold air, perfectly accessible.

“Aaravos, _please,_ ” he cried. All pride—all shame—was burnt to nothing by the glowing heat trapped inside him.

“My poor, sweet human,” Aaravos said. “I know it feels like it’s been ages, but I promise it’s only been seconds. I need to work you open.”

“Just fuck me,” Viren whimpered helplessly. “Please, I don’t care—”

“Shhh.” Aaravos’s blessed, magically slick fingers were at his entrance. Viren groaned as one entered him.

“Just _fuck me,”_ Viren said again. “It’s not enough—please—”

Aaravos ignored him. Viren trembled as the lust continued to wash through him. It felt like a bright star in his chest, growing hotter every moment, and somehow he knew the only cure was to get fucked _right now._ Aaravos worked him open, his fingers scissoring in and out, not even close to what Viren actually needed.

And then—finally—Aaravos’s cock was at his entrance.

“God—yes—please—thank you—” Viren sobbed into the floor, wet soil dirtying his face. Aaravos’s hands squeezed his hips, holding on tight as he thrust.

It was deeply good and painful, painful because it wasn’t enough. It burned through him, the heat so literal he briefly opened his eyes to make sure he wasn’t on fire. He tried to form words, to beg for more, before he realized his voice was hoarse. He was crying out with every thrust Aaravos gave him, and then finally he was getting _fucked,_ properly pounded.

Aaravos grunted behind him, and the small part of Viren that wasn’t entirely in flames was melting with gratitude, this beautiful elf taking care of him, giving him what he needed—

He started to come, a white hot light blinding his eyes, all of that heat releasing from him at once. He was scared Aaravos would slow down, become gentle, and some of the burning would get trapped inside him. But Aaravos kept fucking him hard, the starlight leaving him as he sobbed, his cock splattering come against his stomach, his whole body shaking with the force of the release.

He collapsed with a final cry, and Aaravos let him go, sliding out his still-unsatisfied cock.

Immediately, Viren was moments from sleep. As soon as the starlight was freed from his body, exhaustion overtook him.

Aaravos rolled over his boneless form and straddled him, planting his palms on either side of Viren’s face.

“Very interesting,” Aaravos purred. “I’d never tried that with a human before. I wasn’t sure whether my come would kill you, or drive you insane, or give you the best orgasm of your life.”

“Best...” was all Viren could manage. He whimpered and reached out, dizzy and weak, trying to pull Aaravos down against his lips.

Aaravos complied, humming happily, and kissed him.

Viren luxuriated in the soft, pleasant warmth of Aaravos’s lips, his mind so beautifully fogged. Then a faint spark pressed against his tongue and he remembered: _startouch kiss._ He turned his head, having no other strength with which to resist.

Aaravos growled. “Still?” he asked. “Even now?”

Viren could only close his eyes, exhausted.

A sudden sting snapped him awake. Aaravos had slapped him.

“Not yet, my Master.” Aaravos was all honey. “If just the slightest taste of my come gave you all that pleasure, imagine what a mouthful would do?”

“Kill me, probably,” Viren breathed.

“Maybe,” Aaravos agreed. “But you did say _give me your worst._ So why don’t we find out?”

* * * *

Viren was far past the point of exhaustion. Every time he thought his orgasm would simply lead to unconsciousness, Aaravos would press a potion to his lips, or draw a rune on his skin, and he’d perk up just long enough to be used again. And every time, every time he came, Aaravos asked to kiss him.

Viren didn’t break.

After his last orgasm, he collapsed into the pillow bed, unsurprised when Aaravos collected him into his arms and started painting a rune against his chest.

“Please don’t...” Viren whispered. “I can’t...”

Aaravos’s hands paused.

Viren forced his eyes open, surprised by the shame he felt. He was so much weaker than the elf. He realized he wanted to give Aaravos every single thing Aaravos desired, and it nearly broke him that Aaravos so badly wanted this one thing he could not give.

“Rest,” Aaravos said simply, and swept a cool blanket over Viren’s overheated body.

Viren’s eyelids flickered.

“I don’t understand,” he said tiredly. “You could just take...what you want from me... You could kiss me...”

“Mmm,” Aaravos agreed, kissing Viren’s temple as if to demonstrate. “But then it wouldn’t be a gift.”

Viren was confused. Aaravos was the most powerful person he knew, and he couldn’t make sense of him. He thought of the second most powerful person he’d ever known.

“Harrow always took...when I refused to give...” Viren said.

Aaravos paused. “Harrow forced himself on you?”

Viren shook his head. “Not in bed. In politics...when I disagreed...he put me in my place...”

“Ah,” Aaravos breathed. “A tyrant, then.”

Viren was fading off.

“I am not a tyrant,” Aaravos whispered. He pressed one last kiss against Viren’s abused skin before Viren drifted off to a deep, deep sleep.


	5. Melodrama

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Is this chapter just pure crackfic? You tell me.
> 
> Also, headcanon magic in this one that goes against actual canon, so whatever.
> 
> Also also, fact: I had to rewatch the part in Season 1 Episode 3 when Viren steals Callum's voice for this, and dear lord, Viren is the WORST. He is so horrible. Why/how am I obsessed with these garbage men.

When Viren awoke the afternoon light had faded to a pale orange glow. Sunset? His internal clock told him that they had fucked well past the afternoon.

He’d slept all night. The sun was rising.

He sat up, fully expecting every muscle in his body to ache, for old sweat and dried come to cake his skin unpleasantly, for his tongue to stick to the roof of his dry mouth. But none of these things were true—if anything, he felt better than he had in months, younger and stronger, reinvigorated. He looked down, catching a whiff of himself. Soap. His skin was clean. Aaravos must have healed and magically cleaned him during the night. A faint heat rose to his cheeks when he imagined the elf holding him as he slept, murmuring incantations and drawing runes against his skin.

He caught of glimpse of purple on his bare shoulder. Ah. Aaravos had not healed away any of his bite marks. Viren felt oddly fond over that evidence of the elf’s possessiveness.

He was beautiful when he slept, his white hair sweeping across his face, a blanket draped over his waist, his sculpted arms and chest exposed. He seemed to be sleeping as deeply as Viren had been. Viren had felt weak before, like his human body couldn’t keep up with Aaravos’s, but it dawned on him now that Aaravos had essentially edged himself without any release for hours. That must have been no easy task on his body.

Viren jolted. _Idiot,_ he thought to himself. Sitting here being distracted—this was his chance.

He panicked for a moment, terrified that Aaravos may have thought to clean Viren’s nails. Viren looked down, huffing with relief when he saw that his fingertips were still green with the remains of grinded _occultatum_ leaves.

He stood up, glimpsing the tattered remains of his clothes on the floor. He grabbed Aaravos’s clothes instead, working his way into the elf’s trousers, wrapping the star cloak over his shoulders and clasping its brooch at his throat. Aaravos’s scent bathed him dizzily, but he fought the urge to smell his clothes, grabbing his own staff and bag instead.

There was just one more ingredient to collect. He turned to the sleeping elf, uncorking a vial from his bag. He raised his staff, holding it close to Aaravos’s bare chest.

 _“Gninraey ruoy esaeler,”_ Viren said softly, the world dissolving into purple light for a few seconds.

When his vision returned, he was relieved to find Aaravos still breathing deeply and soundly. Clinging tenuously to the crystal of Viren’s staff was a glowing, delicate strand of starry gossamer. He carefully dipped the gossamer into his vial and corked it. Then he swept out of the cave, heading for the woods.

* * * *

It had taken him two days to think up the spell and a full day of searching to find the _occultatum_ leaves he needed. It had been the only way he could think of to acquire the necessary ingredients: the dark green leaves were known for their supernatural absorptive qualities. A scrap of one leaf could contain, for example, many drops of blood without expanding, making them a convenient tool for covertly collecting samples.

Underneath Viren’s nails was nearly everything he required. Yesterday Viren had goaded and taunted Aaravos into the roughest sex Viren had ever had in his life, and every moment he wasn’t delirious from orgasmic bliss he had been collecting. Aaravos’s sweat, his tears, his blood, his come: It was all stored in the leaves under his nails.

He scraped them out from under his nails, adding his own spit, nicking himself across the palm and letting his blood drip into a goblet. He uncorked the vial containing Aaravos’s spirit-gossamer and pressed his staff against his own chest. He thought hard about Aaravos, how badly he wanted him—how badly he wanted to _mean_ something to him.

 _“Gninraey ruoy esaeler,”_ he murmured, feeling a slight tickle as a strand of his own emotion was pulled from his chest.

He bottled that, too, then regarded all of his contents. Nearly finished.

“What are you doing?”

Viren froze.

And then shoved his hand into his bag, acting quickly, speed his only possible chance against Aaravos. His fist wrapped around a dried wildcat paw. He crushed it and recited, _“Eciov eht laets.”_

From the paw came a glowing green hand that swept into Aaravos’s mouth, snatching his voice. Aaravos’s eyes flashed and with two hands he quickly drew a rune, directing it at Viren.

Viren rolled and dodged as a flash of light burnt the spot where he’d just been crouching. He jumped up and ran, hoping to direct Aaravos’s attention away from his spell materials. He ducked as another flash of light zoomed over his shoulder, setting a tree trunk on fire. His thoughts were scrambling through his mind—if he could just render Aaravos immobile for a moment—but what spell would do the trick—

It was so dark in the woods that he nearly ran into the river without noticing. A glimpse of moonlight reflected against the babbling water, though, and he wheeled to a halt, Aaravos crashing against him.

They both fell to the ground, Viren rolling before Aaravos could get on top of him. Aaravos grabbed his staff and threw it out of the way. Viren sat up, swinging at Aaravos. Aaravos drew another rune in the air and Viren simply threw himself at the elf, having no other way to stop him from casting magic.

They tousled, rolling into a bush, thorns pressing into Viren’s neck. His shoulder crushed into something hard and solid—his staff. He grabbed it, no time to think, and simply smashed it against Aaravos’s skull.

Aaravos staggered back, hand reaching for the bloody gash on his forehead. Viren gaped, momentarily stunned. He hadn’t imagined hurting the elf, hadn’t thought he could really land a blow.

He dropped his staff.

“Aaravos...” he started. Something queasy was rising from the pit of his stomach. Aaravos was glaring at him, looking murderous, and Viren should have run for his life, or simply attacked again, but he was horribly ashamed at the sight of Aaravos’s broken skin.

He dropped the dried paw. Aaravos’s voice flew back into him.

“You stole my _blood,”_ Aaravos said.

“You don’t understand—”

“Blood is used for bonding spells,” Aaravos said, “when there are two consenting mages. Otherwise it is most commonly used for _killing spells.”_

“No, Aaravos—”

A flash of purple light, and the clearing filled with lightning. Viren shouted an incantation, a protective orb surrounding him. Still, he could feel the ground quaking, smell the smoke as plants caught fire, feel the incredible heat of the electric assault.

Aaravos was going to kill him. It was that simple.

But Viren had never given up without a fight.

He sprang to his feet, roaring a spell. It clashed with Aaravos’s next rune, two lights colliding and bursting with a force of energy that blasted them both off their feet. Viren scrambled up, grabbing a fist full of dirt. Aaravos came at him, eyes glowing, and Viren threw it at him.

Aaravos was blinded. It was a dirty attack, maybe pathetic, but Viren had always had to fight that way when he was young. He lodged himself on top of Aaravos, both of them rolling as they struggled for dominance.

It was a chance thing—he recognized the distinctive blue berry of the _torpidus_ bush right next to the river. He grabbed a handful of berries without thought and crushed them between his fingers.

_“Mih bmun.”_

Aaravos collapsed against the ground, limbs unmoving. He growled at Viren, “I could _kill you.”_

“I know,” Viren said. “But if you let me explain—”

“For one night I _trusted_ you.”

Viren froze. That was it, wasn’t it? For all the time they’d known each other they’d had so little faith in one another, always expecting some ultimate betrayal. But on some level they’d both assumed it would come from Aaravos; even Viren hadn’t expected himself to be the betrayer.

Yesterday they had both been vulnerable and exposed, and Viren had used it—no, _planned_ it—as an opportunity to collect every intimate bit of Aaravos for magic Viren knew he would never consent to.

He had been afforded some modicum of trust, and he had broken that trust immediately. There would be no explanations, no forgiveness. Either Aaravos would kill him, or he would kill Aaravos.

The moment was surreal. He reached into his pocket and crushed another dried paw to dust, gripping his staff and murmuring a spell to bring Aaravos to unconsciousness. He wasn’t sure whether it would be strong enough against a startouch elf, but it worked. Aaravos’s eyes closed, his breathing slowed.

Viren rolled over Aaravos’s paralyzed body, dragging him by his cloak until he could hold Aaravos’s head under the river. He couldn’t think of a faster, more bloodless way to do it. He just held him under, face submerged in water. Viren’s cloak dipped down into the water—it was Aaravos’s cloak, smelled like him—

He couldn’t do it.

He hoisted Aaravos by his shoulders, thinking wildly that he couldn’t feel Aaravos breathing. He whispered the reversal to the numbing spell, to the spell of unconsciousness, shaking when Aaravos didn’t rise.

Fuck. His staff. He was panicking so badly he’d forgotten he needed his staff. He reached for it, not letting go of Aaravos, and reversed the spells properly.

Nothing. Aaravos’s eyes were closed, his chest unmoving.

Viren didn’t understand. It hadn’t even been that long—only seconds had passed—but he didn’t know the lung capacity of an elf—

He wiped wildly at the tears in his eyes. There was one spell that might help. If he could capture his own breath and then transfer it to Aaravos. One’s breath for another’s.

Viren set Aaravos gently to the ground and sat beside him, staff in hand, and parted Aaravos’s lips. He murmured against them, _“Htaerb ym evig I.”_

It was like his lungs had been punctured. Air rushed from his mouth into Aaravos’s. He registered his own life fading, vision growing dark. Aaravos opened his eyes...

A flash of white light, and Viren gasped, coughing, falling back as fresh air filled his lungs again. He lay panting, the black dots in his vision fading away until he could see Aaravos clearly, looking down at him.

“You are insane,” Aaravos said calmly.

Viren could do nothing but focus on breathing.

“No, not insane,” Aaravos mused. “You made a decision. _Oh._..” He grinned and patted Viren’s head. “Sweet, sweet human. You would rather die than live in this world without me?”

“How can you joke?” Viren panted. “I just nearly...”

“Mmm, you didn’t, though,” Aaravos said. With a wave of his hand the water that drenched his hair evaporated, the gash on his forehead healed, and he looked entirely unbothered. “It’s all right, Viren.”

“It is _not,”_ Viren insisted. “I—what I did—was unforgivable. I am _sorry.”_

“Ooh, yes, I like this part.” Aaravos clapped his hands silently. “You want to repent? Please, I _adore_ human repentance. What will you offer to make up for your transgression?”

Viren forced himself up and prostrated himself before Aaravos, just as Aaravos had done for him the day before.

“Anything,” he said. “I am yours. Unconditionally.”

He sensed a shift in the air, the teases dissipating.

“You know what I want,” Aaravos said simply, and Viren did.

He sat on his knees and lowered his head, waiting in silent submission.

When Aaravos cupped his cheek he did not resist. It seemed wrong that this should be a potential path of repentance, that he should be permitted to simply kiss his way out of attempted murder. But Aaravos’s lips met his and he couldn’t help but tremble, couldn’t resist enjoying it. He reached out, relieved when Aaravos didn’t push him away. He wanted more than anything just to hold him, and he _needed_ to kiss him, to have Aaravos enter him however he pleased. To know Viren’s thoughts, his guilt, that he was more sorry than he had ever been for anything in his life. He had made so many mistakes, chasing away his ex-wife, Harrow, even his own son, but none of those regrets amounted to—

“All right, all right, I _comprehend,_ Viren,” Aaravos said, breaking away. “You are forgiven.”

“But—” Viren started, skin flushed with Aaravos’s stars.

“Come here, you magnificently dramatic human,” Aaravos said, scooping an arm around Viren and lying on the grass. Viren had no choice but to lie with his head on Aaravos’s chest, Aaravos’s fingers stroking his hair.

“How can you forgive me?” he asked.

“Shh,” Aaravos breathed. “Tell me. What very revealing things have you learned about yourself this morning? What lesson have I taught you?”

He thought. It was obvious now that, just as Aaravos had said, he would rather die than live without Aaravos. But it was more than that. Life was...was _nothing_ without Aaravos, it wasn’t worth being alive at all. That was the lesson he—

“Lesson...” Viren repeated. It clicked. He sat up.

“You weren’t drowning,” he said. “And when we were on the ground—you let me hit you.”

Aaravos only smiled lazily at him.

“You planned that,” Viren said angrily. “All of it...? Starting from when?”

“From your birth, maybe,” Aaravos sang, and then chuckled.

Viren glared at him.

“Come back here.” Aaravos patted his chest, where Viren had been resting his head.

“You can’t _do_ that,” Viren growled. “You can’t manipulate me like that.”

“How did I manipulate you?” Aaravos sounded insulted. “I may have let you land a few blows and cast a few spells at me. I suppose I could have just killed you immediately instead, struck you down right after I’d discovered you’d stolen my blood. I am deeply, deeply sorry for my inconsideration.”

“You made me feel like I’d nearly killed you—”

“I can’t _make_ you feel anything,” Aaravos corrected. “And even if I could, I wouldn’t. That would be boring. I simply...orchestrated a situation. What actions you chose, and whatever feelings you felt, were yours entirely.”

This bastard. A smile spread across Viren’s lips despite himself. It was like yesterday, when he’d commanded Aaravos to call him ‘Master’ and Aaravos had immediately switched it to ‘my Master,’ indicating clearly who owned whom. It was like when Viren had gotten angry that Aaravos was reading his mind and Aaravos hadn’t even realized he’d done something wrong.

“You’re completely insane,” Viren said, sinking down and nuzzling Aaravos’s chest.

“Mm,” Aaravos agreed. “We have so much in common.”

Viren wriggled up so that he could kiss Aaravos again. Aaravos purred, his hand twining into Viren’s hair. Viren parted his lips, letting Aaravos in, closing his eyes as he was graced with an exhalation of starlight.

The warmth filled him, and he leaned into it. He wanted, so badly, to have more of Aaravos. If that meant giving more of himself to the elf, then so be it.

The kiss was ended reluctantly when Viren needed to breathe. He sighed, looping a leg over Aaravos and tucking his head into the crook of Aaravos’s neck. Aaravos pet him, and Viren let himself bask in the buoyant affection he had for the elf.

He’d been outmaneuvered so easily. His own submission felt complete. There would be no more fighting, no more struggles for dominance. Aaravos had won, and now all Viren needed to do was submit to him entirely. That filled him with a wonderful sense of completeness—a levity, a release, a comfort. The responsibility wasn’t his anymore. He was Aaravos’s.

“A funny little thing,” Aaravos said, and Viren closed his eyes to better hear his voice. “I like you compliant and submissive just as much as I like you defiant and angry. You do please me in all your moods, Viren.”

Viren hummed wordlessly. Was it too soon to ask for another startouch kiss? His skin was still glowing from the last one...

Aaravos traced along his arm, making him shiver.

“Show me what your spell work was,” Aaravos said. “Its ingredients—they’re an unusual combination.”

“It’s for a potion,” Viren said. “I made it up while you were gone. I don’t know if it will work.”

“An _experiment._ How delicious. Why don’t we see how it turns out?”


	6. The Potion

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Viren is like, "I've got drugs," and Aaravos is like, "Give me some."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm at that point of viravos-obsession where literally every song reminds me of them. Some notables include:
> 
> -E.T. by Katy Perry  
> -You Belong to Me by Cat Pierce  
> -Say You'll Be There by the Spice Girls (???)
> 
> If you have any more recs to fuel my obsession I'll take 'em.
> 
> Anyway. Let's goooo

Viren mixed it all into one goblet: traces of their blood, semen, tears, and sweat mingled together. The extracted essence of Aaravos’s yearning for Viren, and Viren’s yearning for Aaravos, glowed in twin gossamer strands that swirled together, forming a double helix at the bottom of the goblet. Iron filings, powdered ruby, moonberry juice—Viren added them all and then stirred.

“There was one more ingredient that I thought might increase the potion’s chances of success,” Viren said. “But I couldn’t figure out how to acquire it.”

“And what would that be?”

“Startouch magic,” Viren said. “Just a splash.”

Aaravos reached out. From his fingers came flecks of light, speckling the potion, swirling until it looked like a scarlet, starlit sky.

“We should each drink half,” Viren said.

Aaravos raised an eyebrow. “How exactly were you planning on feeding me this potion, after you’d stolen every bodily fluid I have to offer and snuck out into the woods?”

“I hadn’t thought that far ahead,” Viren admitted.

Aaravos looked amused.

“Would you like me to tell you the intended effects?” Viren asked.

“Oh, no,” Aaravos said. “No spoiling.”

He took the goblet and gulped down three swallows, wiping his mouth and handing the rest to Viren.

Viren drank. It was surprisingly hot, the taste metallic and sweet. He felt the magic course through his blood like a sugar rush. He tossed the emptied goblet aside.

They both sat before each other, waiting. Aaravos’s eyes shone, and his star-freckles glowed as always, but nothing changed. Viren himself felt no transformation. Disappointment sank heavy in his gut.

 _“Yes,”_ Aaravos cried out suddenly. He reached for Viren, and Viren already knew what to expect—what the potion was intended to do.

Aaravos kissed him hard. Thousands of glittering lights spread from Aaravos’s mouth down Viren’s whole body. Before, a startouch kiss felt like all the doors inside Viren were being swung open. Now it felt like there were no doors at all, like Aaravos could crawl inside him completely.

Viren moaned. A faint light flickered in his own chest, and that was _his_ light, a tiny piece of his own soul. He willed it to glow hotter, brighter, kept kissing Aaravos even as he struggled to direct his own light. He pushed, his tongue entering Aaravos’s mouth. His legs were entwined with Aaravos’s, his arms clinging to Aaravos’s bare back. They fell into the grass just as the light from Viren’s body spread into Aaravos.

 _It was happening._ The startouch kiss was reversed, the potion had _worked,_ their magnetic yearnings colliding, the soul-invasion becoming a two-way connection. Viren’s energy reached inside Aaravos.

He understood immediately why Aaravos had felt verbal consent was a waste of time. It was all so _obvious,_ Aaravos’s excitement entering Viren like the emotion was his own. He didn’t need to ask if Aaravos wanted to be kissed because he could _feel_ how much he wanted it.

He explored Aaravos’s body from the inside. It was reassuring how human Aaravos’s senses were, how he smelled and tasted and felt pleasure just like Viren. Aaravos loved the way Viren clung to him, like Viren might drown if he didn’t hug Aaravos tight. Aaravos felt the same burning in his groin that Viren felt, the same roiling pleasure in his stomach, the same nerves firing off in his lips, his tongue, down his limbs.

Viren pushed farther, reached deeper. Aaravos’s brain, _yes, his mind—_

Aaravos groaned against him like he wanted to say something, but it was too late, Viren was already in his head—

_Emptiness._

Viren plummeted into deep black. A cold that would instantly kill his mortal body enveloped his soul.

He was trapped in the vast nothingness of space, and in it all of Aaravos’s apathy and detachment diffused through the lightyears of darkness. This part of Aaravos—it was a cruel god, incapable of love. It did not care about Viren. To compare Viren to an ant would be to overemphasize his importance.

He traveled trillions of miles through Aaravos’s universe, all frigid and opaque, loveless, airless, without gravity—

A single star. It flared at a temperature that would destroy all of earth in a microsecond, and it _yearned,_ knew how to burn with love for billions of years, the hearts of every living creature on earth possessing as much passion, comparatively, as cold stone.

But how important the earth was to this star, no matter how small the planet seemed. Every other star was lightyears away, all this burning was occurring in so much aloneness. A star needed a satellite to revolve around it, to anchor it, for its own gravitational force to be made important. Aaravos loved far beyond any passion Viren could feel in his human form; he loved _Viren_ far, far more than Viren could ever love him back, but Viren’s love was still essential to him.

He wanted worship, if only to be anchored to something. He needed to not be left alone in his own immense desolation.

Viren was so small. He had thought denying Aaravos a startouch kiss had been about denying him orgasm; he had thought it was mere physical pleasure that Aaravos craved. But no. Depriving him of that soul-kiss had been more akin to shoving him into the infinite darkness of a subzero void.

It had been a torture of loneliness that would kill any human, and Aaravos had not even asked for mercy.

Viren wrenched away, gasping.

“Shh, shh, I’m here.” Aaravos was holding him; the world was black—it was night, only night. The moon was here. He was on earth.

He shook, panting. He sensed that they had stopped kissing a long time ago. Maybe...hours had passed?

“I’m here, I’m right here,” Aaravos said. He was tracing a rune against Viren’s chest—a healing rune. It faded in the air, having no effect on Viren, because Viren was not hurt. Aaravos immediately started drawing another one, like he’d been doing that for a long time as Viren lay unconscious against him.

Viren reached out, pushing the rune-drawing hand away.

“I’m here,” Viren rasped. Here? Where? Out...in the universe...

“Right here,” Aaravos said, kissing his hair, and he murmured into Viren’s ear, voice soft. “You’re not alone, Viren. I won’t leave you. I’m here.”

It dawned on Viren that Aaravos knew exactly what to say because he had maybe needed someone to say it to him many times before, only no one had ever been there. Viren reached out blindly, vertiginous.

“I can’t feel my head,” he said, knowing this was nonsensical. He couldn’t explain the feeling. He was and was not on planet Earth. “I’m sorry I wouldn’t kiss you.”

“Shh. You didn’t know.” Aaravos rubbed his back.

He’d been so stupid. Caring that Aaravos kept secrets? They were not _secrets_ —they were unspeakable but basic facts of his existence that Viren would never have been able to comprehend. The distances in the universe that humans called _infinite_ and _unfathomable_ were for Aaravos calculatable and comprehensible. This entire time, far from keeping secrets, Aaravos had been making an incredible effort to translate his thoughts into words Viren could understand. He had tried so hard to share every part of himself that Viren might be able to grasp, and even this—even this Viren had misunderstood, distorted, attempted to manipulate.

Viren squeezed his eyes shut, shaking as the memory of utter darkness swept over him.

“I’ve got you,” Aaravos said softly. “I’m not leaving.” He conjured a goblet of water, holding it to Viren’s lips. Viren drank, coolness spreading down his throat, reminding him that he _had_ a throat, a body, a grounded body that was not immune to gravity. He was right here. He was in Aaravos’s arms. He was here.

“My potion worked,” he said suddenly.

“Yes, shh,” Aaravos cooed, stroking his hair. He drew quick, small runes into Viren’s skin, and Viren didn’t know what they did except fill him with warmth. “You’re amazing, Viren. I never expected...”

“I just wanted to kiss you,” Viren babbled on. “I wanted—to know what it was like.”

“I know,” Aaravos whispered. “It’s okay. I didn’t realize you would—or could—reach in so far. It’s okay. You’re okay.”

He continued stroking Viren’s hair, and Viren looked up at him. He couldn’t decide whether to tell Aaravos that he loved him or that he wanted to worship him, whether he desired Aaravos as a partner or as his god. But it didn’t matter, because he couldn’t even speak anymore, couldn’t remember where his mouth was.

He laughed in his head, at how his heart was pounding so hard, like he’d been running, like he’d sprinted past the galaxy and back. And even funnier, how all he wanted was to kiss Aaravos, even after all that.

He laughed and laughed in his own mind, the stars above pressing in, the distances between them threatening to crawl into his ears. He couldn’t take it—started trembling again—

“Viren!” Aaravos called out, a whole universe away. “You’re here. I’m with you.” His palm pressed over Viren’s eyes. _“Ad somnum.”_

Viren’s mind went quiet.


	7. The Immense Desolation

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Viren copes with having seen into Aaravos's mind.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much for all of your encouraging comments, everyone. <3 I'm sorry for typos.

The heavens were inside him, vaporizing his blood.

“Are you really here?” Viren asked, regarding Aaravos’s half-hidden figure. He realized he was dreaming. He realized that in a very real way he was dying. Humans were not meant for such swift changes in enthalpy, were not made for the universe to use their bodies as vacuums, all the freezing emptiness of space zooming inside him, liquid to gas to death.

Still, Aaravos was beautiful. He turned to Viren. Viren gasped, falling back, landing on his bed of pillows in the cave, eyes snapping open—

“Shh.” That was the real Aaravos, all pieced-together. Viren’s mind was already repressing what he’d dreamt: Aaravos’s face half-obliterated by cosmic energy. No—that energy had been Aaravos himself, without form, without warmth, undiluted power.

“Please—” Viren sweated. He was and was not awake. His eyes were and were not open. The stars were _everywhere._ “Please. I can’t close myself—”

In his mouth, his eyes, his nose, his ears—everywhere it could enter, the universe was inside him—all that heat—he was freezing—

Aaravos was drawing runes. Viren recognized them: heat and cold, heat and cold. Viren was frozen in the yawning, subglacial emptiness of the universe, and Aaravos breathed warmth into his body. Viren was burning from nuclear fusion in the belly of a star. Aaravos cooled him, pressing an enchanted icy cloth to his forehead. It was quick spell work, Aaravos never sleeping, always alert, keeping Viren in balance.

“I can’t do it.” Viren struggled in the bed.

“Shh, I’m here,” Aaravos said, meaning, _you’re not doing it alone._ “You need rest.”

“They keep getting in,” Viren said hoarsely. “I—I can’t close—I can’t stop the expansion—”

 _I wasn’t made for this,_ he wanted to say, but he remembered being inside Aaravos’s body, how human that had felt. Aaravos wasn’t made for this either.

“Shh.” Aaravos’s fingers. Fingers what? Where and how? “You’re an open system, Viren. You’re an open system and you have limits.”

It was incredible the amount of relief and sense this brought to Viren. Like a mantra; he repeated it again and again. _Open system—limits._ _Open system—limits._ Aaravos understood.

“These are your limits.” Aaravos was touching. Touching what?

Body. His hands were running down Viren’s body. Yes. Aaravos was touching him, because they both had _bodies._ “This is you, Viren.”

He touched Viren everywhere, reminding Viren of how he existed and where. Viren was not stretching out infinitely; he ended where Aaravos grazed the sole of his foot, the tips of his fingers, the outline of his lips.

“An open system with limits,” Aaravos reminded him.

Viren was an open system. That meant the cosmos could enter him and the cosmos could leave him. He did not have to be filled up with stars and emptiness forever. He could be finite. He could be touched. He could stay alive.

He was searching for balance. It was somewhere in the universe.

He thought: Water had too many hydrogen bonds. It stole those from stars; that wasn’t justice. Water was an ugly potentiality. What were ugly potentialities called again? Oh, yes. Life.

Many days passed and maybe a night. The universe was his enemy. It was a labyrinth with nothing in it; it had not been made for him. Everything that existed was a weapon against him. He could not bear to be alone in it all. The language of emptiness was silence. He heard so much nothing and his ears were dying.

 _“I’m here. I’m here, I’m here.”_ Just hours of this, Aaravos’s murmurs reaching through the lightyears. He could not rescue Viren from the vast trenches of interstellar medium. He could only stay with him.

Maybe Viren would not die, but he would never feel again. Whatever he’d thought loyalty or happiness or love were—they were inconsequential now. He couldn’t touch anything. He couldn’t be mortal anymore.

He refused water.

Everything on Earth was irrelevant in the span of ten billion years.

Nothing was much. Something couldn’t be enough. Something wasn’t _ever._ Except Aaravos.

Were stars enough? Enough of what, and what was enough? He refused water.

Nights later, he crawled out of the cave and up the hill and got too close to the stars and nearly died. He fought Aaravos, struggled, wrestled, relented. Aaravos held him down, down, down, earth-anchored, two earth-formed things on the hill.

 _“You have to give yourself to the earth,”_ Aaravos was saying. It was practical instruction, direct and urgent. He had to commit himself to the earth or the cosmos would come and take him and not give him back.

But how could he give himself to the earth? Earth was not the opposite of universe. It was not his place—it, too, was vast and loveless, only on earth lovelessness had faces: his mother’s, his father’s, Sarai’s, Lissa’s, Harrow’s, so many people who had loved him and stopped, or hated him from the start.

The problem, in conclusion, was that Viren had never once had a place.

Well, that was one problem. He refused water.

“Viren, you have to _drink.”_ That was the water again, pressing against his lips. That was Aaravos holding him.

He refused, he _wouldn’t._ Water had life; water was earth-stuff that had been stolen from the stars. He _couldn’t._

Although he recognized wise counsel when he heard it. Maybe he wanted to give himself to the earth. But how? And where was the earth?

A comforting thought: A speck of stardust contained just as much infinitude as all the stars in the universe combined. It was all the same. Everything was normal. Even ever-expanding vastness was cozy.

If he were to commit to the earth, then something on earth needed to commit to him.

“Please, Viren, for me. Please, you will die.”

Hours of this begging and Viren couldn’t figure out what he was supposed to do. He just loved Aaravos. Had he mentioned that yet? Had he told him he loved him?

“Viren, drink, _please.”_

He parted his lips. How to form the words?

Coolness trickled into his mouth and he swallowed. It flowed through everywhere within his limits. Body. It was _good,_ revitalizing, lowered his heartbeat, smelled like a river.

Heartbeats and rivers. Earth-stuff. What else was earth-stuff...

When he awoke he was on the hill looking up at the midnight sky and Aaravos was trying to drag him back to the cave again, arms around his waist. Fighting to stop him from being star-swallowed.

“It’s okay,” Viren said, and he must not have spoken in a very long time, because Aaravos let go of him out of sheer surprise. Viren fell over, dizzy and weak. He didn’t mind that, his hands in the dirt. Earth-stuff.

“Viren.” Aaravos’s voice quivered.

“I have just realized,” Viren said. “I was made from residual stardust. I’m remade, again and again, from the elements of the stars. The water is from the stars, and the plants, and the soil... All earth-stuff is stars.”

“Yes,” Aaravos said. His eyes were full of caution; it was clear he didn’t understand that Viren was safe, a newfound but unbreakable certainty forged within him.

“Well, I have always been stars,” Viren said calmly. “Nothing has changed at all.”

Aaravos was just looking at him as though scared he would float away. He had dark bruises under his glowing eyes; even startouch elves needed sleep. A wave of guilt touched Viren through the tranquility, something human and humbling.

“I was gone a long time?” Viren guessed.

“Many weeks,” Aaravos said, reaching out and cupping his cheek. “I didn’t think you would live.”

“I’m here now,” Viren said. “Oh, and also.” He looked up at the sky, his hand glowing simply because he willed it to. Nothing had changed: This star-stuff was himself, what had always been there.

He drew a rune Aaravos had once drawn and murmured, _“Proxima astra.”_

The galaxy opened up before them, enlarged a hundredfold, Aaravos illuminated with starlight, his beautiful lips parted in shock.

“I know the star arcanum now,” Viren said.


	8. As Many Hands As Stars

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which everything is right with the world.

He was sitting before a circle of earthly trinkets: his stolen sunfire staff, sachets of herbs, vials of claws and bones. All the necessary artifacts of dark magic lay before him on the hilltop. The sun was a low orange dip in the sky, sinking fast.

“Here so soon?”

“Yes.” Viren was unsurprised when Aaravos appeared behind him. He sensed Aaravos’s presence easily now, even when they were far away from each other. It was the same way he could feel the stars: They weren’t always visible, but he always knew they were there. And when he slept, he dreamt of them. Perhaps he and Aaravos could learn to whisper to one another in the same way.

They both had so much to learn.

Aaravos stayed standing, petting his head, and Viren nuzzled his thigh.

“I remember when I was young,” Aaravos said. “It was unbearable to miss even a moment of starshine.”

“I want to be here when they arrive." Already the sky was darkening.

“And what’s all this?” Aaravos gestured to the objects of dark magic, sitting down beside him.

“When the stars entered me, I was purified of dark magic,” Viren said. He had known this for weeks now. His true form, veined and grey-haired and pale, had changed. He no longer needed dark magic to maintain the appearance he preferred; he looked ten years younger, felt stronger, his body cleansed of all maladies. “I thought...maybe...”

“You’re wondering whether you should destroy it all,” Aaravos said. “Even your staff.”

Viren nodded.

“But part of you doesn’t want to.”

“Dark magic has so many uses.” It was more than that, too. Dark magic had been the tool that saved his son’s life. Dark magic had saved kingdoms. Dark magic had saved _him,_ allowed him to crawl up from the gutters into the bed of a king. It felt almost like a friend to him, had helped him even when no one else would.

“But you are afraid returning to it would weaken you again.” Aaravos, these past few weeks, seemed to follow his thought patterns easily. The constant miscommunications were a thing of the past.

“I feel pure,” Viren said. “Uncorrupted. I didn’t think I could ever feel this way again—no, I’ve _never_ felt this way before, this strong.”

Aaravos wrapped an arm around Viren’s waist and leaned forward. Their preferred way of speaking was still this: Aaravos’s lips pressed right to Viren’s ear. “It’s a gift from the stars. The stars will never take their gifts back from you, Viren. If you practice dark magic now it will not corrupt you.”

Viren stilled. “Really? I can have...both?”

“You can have _everything,”_ Aaravos corrected. Then paused. “A shame, though. Destroying this all would have been so much more climactic than simply packing it back up.”

Viren smiled. He had a new appreciation for Aaravos’s humor. He understood what it signified now that he, too, had nearly surrendered to the coldness of the universe. They could both, at any time, give themselves to the stars and transform into something entirely unknowable. They had both chosen not to, and now Viren admired every small thing about Aaravos that reminded him of this: his wit, his vanity, his expressiveness, his lust. All of these were exercises in remaining committed to the Earth.

The stars were out now, little golden dots amidst a cloudy canvas. Viren breathed them in, his blood tingling.

Aaravos buried his face in the crook of Viren’s neck. Without even needing to look, he murmured, _“Proxima astra,”_ and the darkened sky instantly cleared of clouds, tens of thousands of stars falling close to them.

It still took all of Viren’s concentration to bring the sky close like that, and Aaravos performed the spell as an afterthought. Learning the star arcanum had made Viren feel worshipful and small compared to Aaravos. He had not yet figured out how to pray to his god.

“Teach me something,” he murmured, because that always seemed to please Aaravos.

Teaching had been much of what they’d been doing since Viren had started healing. Aaravos said it was important he master the stars, or else the stars would master him. Unlike the other primal sources, the stars were a constant threat to those who wielded them. Viren could not ignore them or submit to them.

“Do you remember how to summon star charts?”

This was when the sky became painted with the truths of someone’s past, present, and future. Viren remembered, but it took him hours to accomplish.

“Do it for me,” he said.

Aaravos smiled. “Whose life do you want to see?”

“Claudia’s."

Aaravos waved his hand. It was impossible to explain: It wasn’t that the sky changed, quite. Stars were not literally shifting in place simply because Viren wanted to check on his daughter. It was more like the stars became _about_ his daughter, their locations representing significant parts of her life.

Every light above murmured to him, but he couldn’t always understand. He still needed Aaravos’s guidance.

“That’s Soren, isn’t it?” Viren said, pointing to two stars gleaming close to each other. He couldn’t say how he knew; he just felt it. “In...a few months’ time? She will reunite with Soren and they will forgive each other.”

“Yes, good,” Aaravos said. “What else do you see?”

Viren told him, deciphering what he could from the sky. He was assuaged to find no danger directly in Claudia’s path; she was going to be safe and happy and loved.

“Look over here,” Aaravos said, pointing at a string of stars beside a nebula cloud. “I haven’t taught you how to read this yet. That’s your daughter’s life line.”

Viren squinted, trying to make sense of it.

“It keeps changing,” he said.

“Yes,” Aaravos said. “A life span is not a certain thing. You can align it with other events in her life, though. Look.” He pointed. “That was her life span before you introduced her to dark magic.” It was a trail of stars leading upwards, and then crashing down. “It changes at the dip. That must have been when she cast her first spell.”

“I shortened her life,” Viren said in horror.

“Don’t be alarmed,” Aaravos said. “She’ll still live a long time.”

This did not leave Viren feeling precisely guiltless.

“I want to see my son’s life span,” he said.

Aaravos waved his hand, and suddenly the sky was all Soren. The same two stars twinkled beside each other, a clear indication of the near-certainty of his reunion with his sister. Viren was warmed.

“I knew it,” he said, reading the life line. “His life almost flickered out, there, can you see? He was sick as a boy.” Then it suddenly grew, stretching slightly past where Claudia’s had ended. “It elongated when I saved him.”

Aaravos didn’t say anything, but Viren _sensed_ a thought on his mind. “What is it?”

“I want to see yours,” Aaravos said. “I’m not certain, but...”

Viren simply waited as Aaravos ran his hand over the sky again. Viren blinked; it felt strange, almost embarrassing, to see the stars suddenly represent him.

“My life line...” His eyes widened. “I...”

It had been so short for so long. Whereas Claudia’s and Soren’s both had changing but ultimately smooth arcs, dipping or rising for long stretches, Viren’s first fifteen years of life were mapped out in short jags, going up and down, up and down, as if the universe hadn’t been sure whether he would live or die.

It was strange to see his difficult childhood spelled out like that, his struggling reflected in the stars. He could see the precise date he had befriended Harrow. With a prince suddenly caring for him, his life span unfolded properly for the first time. He had had no idea...his future had been so muddied, his chances of survival so small, until he met Harrow.

He felt himself forgive the late king for whatever arguments they had had in the past.

His life span vastly expanded at another point, too.

“That’s when I met you,” Viren said suddenly. “I—the moment I saw you in the mirror, my life span increased.”

“Yes,” Aaravos confirmed. “Befriending me tends to have that effect.”

“That is...ironic. I thought you were going to kill me,” Viren said. “So many times, I thought you were the worst thing that had ever happened to me. Do you remember when I wanted to throw your mirror into the river?”

“That would have been like skipping your dinner greens,” Aaravos tsked. “So very good for both of us that you didn’t.”

“I can’t understand the rest of the line,” he admitted.

“It fades out for a moment over here, when you died after the battle,” Aaravos said, pointing.

“I see...” It was strange how he forgot that sometimes. He felt so very much alive. “But the new line doesn’t... Where is its end?”

“It has an end,” Aaravos said.

“Where?”

“Too far away to see.”

“That doesn’t make sense,” Viren said. “You said Claudia lives for a long time, but my life line stretches far beyond hers.”

“There’s only one other life line I know of that looks like yours,” Aaravos said. He waved his hand, and the stars suddenly seemed whiter, colder, full of Aaravos and his power.

“Yours,” Viren said, suddenly breathless.

Aaravos leaned over and stroked his chest.

“You are a child of the stars now,” he said. “Their life force is in you. You will live for many millennia.”

“You knew?” Viren asked.

“I suspected,” he said. “You are claimed by the stars now, Viren. All their gifts are yours.”

“Millennia...” Viren said, unable to fully grasp it. Yet it made sense, didn’t it? He no longer felt middle aged. He felt at the very precipice of the rest of his long life.

A thought occurred to him.

“How old are you?”

“Hmm.” Aaravos considered. “About one thousand years, I believe.”

“You’re just a child!” Viren couldn’t belief it. Aaravos was a god, but he was a _baby_ god. “You’re so young. Like me.”

Aaravos laughed, but Viren remembered suddenly that he had been trapped in the mirror prison for three hundred years. Almost half of his life, separated from the stars.

Viren rolled over and wrapped an arm around him.

“You will never be unfree or alone again,” he said.

“We all need our personal time, Viren.”

Viren snorted. Yet another thought occurred to him.

“What are we going to do with all this time?”

He looked up at the stars. They did not hold all the answers, not in obvious ways. He remembered when Aaravos had shared his plan with Viren before. That plan had been a deeply imperfect translation of what the cosmos foretold, simplified for human comprehensibility. The future was always changing, every shift causing a myriad of reverberations. In other words, there were infinite possibilities, which meant that Aaravos had never had _a_ plan—he had infinite plans, and all of those infinite plans were infinitely changing.

Viren knew the star arcanum, but this was still intimidating to him. Aaravos would always, always be a god to him.

“Well.” Aaravos made a show of thinking, putting his finger to his chin. “You still owe me a bounty of orgasms, from all those long days when I was so cruelly denied.”

“I will make you come for five straight millennia,” Viren promised.

“And I will teach you the other arcana, of course,” Aaravos said, almost as an afterthought.

Viren stiffened.

“Don’t worry. They’re entirely prosaic once you understand the stars,” Aaravos said. “It’s one moon, one sun, one ocean, one sky, one Earth. All very domestic and compact. Easy.”

Viren smiled. So much of what looked like arrogance on Aaravos was simply the truth; already Viren could imagine how basic the other primal sources were compared to mastering the limitless universe.

“And then we will rule the world,” Aaravos said. “You will be crowned king at some point, so that I can return to my favorite pastime of calling you _King Viren.”_

“And you will be acknowledged as a god, and everyone will worship you,” Viren said.

“I don’t care about that,” Aaravos said dismissively.

“You are a god,” Viren insisted. “They will worship you as such.”

Aaravos smirked.

“You have a look on your face that says you’re thinking about me fucking you,” he observed, a finger brushing Viren’s chin.

“I wasn’t.” Viren blinked.

“But you are now,” Aaravos said, correctly.

Viren responded as he often did, by leaning forward to kiss him. They both flinched, stilling.

They had not startouch kissed since drinking the potion. That had been almost three months ago. Viren had spent weeks in the stars, drifting between unconsciousness and sleepwalking while Aaravos guarded him. After Viren had awoken, he’d been weak, nearly overcome with thirst and hunger. He’d needed time to regain his strength. Aaravos had kept him fed and watered. Aaravos had touched him, reacquainted him with his body.

So much of the healing process had depended on sex. Every touch, every orgasm had been an exercise in remaining committed to the Earth. They hadn’t kissed, though; they both knew it was too dangerous to bring Viren out into the stars again when he was just finding his way back home.

He was healed now. He no longer had dreams of drifting away.

“I’m ready,” Viren said.

Aaravos’s eyes widened. “Viren, no. _Never_ again.”

“I can take it,” he said. “It’s different now. You said it yourself: The stars have claimed me.”

“That doesn’t mean they won’t destroy you,” Aaravos said. “My mind is too close to the cosmos. It’s—”

“—a perfectly safe place for me to be.” Viren brushed Aaravos’s hand. The touch said: _I know about hands; I know about touch. I know that I am of the earth and for the earth, even as I take from the stars._

“I’m ready now,” Viren said again. “Please. Trust me.”

Their gazes met. A crease formed between Aaravos’s brows. It was so beautiful to see that concern on a celestially perfect face. Concern for _Viren._

“We can’t just dive into it,” Aaravos said. “We need to prepare you.”

Viren nodded, although he already knew he could kiss right now. He’d been inside Aaravos’s mind and survived, had let it rearrange him into something stronger. Any preparations would be for Aaravos’s sake, to assure him that this was safe.

He started by kissing Viren’s neck. Viren sighed, closing his eyes to better feel the little peppered bursts of pleasure as his nerves awoke. Aaravos unclasped his own cloak and lay it out on the grass, pressing Viren down gently.

Aaravos straddled him, and Viren reached up, glossing his fingers over the bright heat of Aaravos’s star markings. Aaravos leaned over him, his face so very serious. He was looking at Viren like he was trying to decide what particular combination of touches, strokes, and licks would best secure Viren to the earth, keep him safe from the stars.

“Just touch me,” Viren said, trying not to laugh. He wrapped his arms around Aaravos and pulled him close until their chests pressed together. Aaravos kissed his hair, his temples, his ears. He licked a hot, possessive stripe from Viren’s jaw to his temple. Viren groaned, his cock already hardening, pressing against his trousers.

Aaravos didn’t vanish Viren’s clothes with magic, opting instead to fill the moment with as much earth-stuff as possible. He undressed Viren agonizingly slowly, unclasping Viren’s belts, helping him escape from his tunic. When Viren was finally naked from the waist up, Aaravos complained, “You wear so many _layers.”_

Viren chuckled, a sound that was immediately overridden when Aaravos tongued at his nipple.

“A-ahh—” Viren’s toes curled; his spine arched as he struggled with the pleasure.

Aaravos kept licking, then wet his own fingertip so that he could tease one nipple while he sucked the other. Viren’s hips bucked, his fingers wrapped tight in Aaravos’s hair.

“I—fuck—” he panted. “You’re going to make me come—”

Aaravos stopped the onslaught and licked down his torso instead, kissing underneath his rib cage, down the thin trail of hair that led beneath his pants. Aaravos unlaced his trousers, Viren struggling to kick them off. It was a bit maddening to undress without magic.

Finally, his cock was freed, his entire body exposed to the cool evening air. Aaravos pushed Viren’s legs open, nibbling at his thighs, licking up his perineum to his balls. With spit-coated fingers he worked between Viren’s crack, teasing and stroking. Viren gasped, biting his lip, nails digging into Aaravos’s cloak.

Aaravos sucked Viren’s cock almost delicately. Viren’s breath grew increasingly ragged as he watched, Aaravos’s long tongue working up his entire length. Aaravos looked up, a mischievous smile on his lips, and Viren had to close his eyes before the sight made him come.

“Ah—that’s—fuck—” Viren keened as Aaravos’s fingers pushed up inside him. They felt so good this deep inside his ass. His hole puckered even while his cock was being sucked, like his whole body just wanted to let Aaravos know how greedy he was. Aaravos released Viren’s cock, working his way down to Viren’s crack.

He licked there, Viren raising his hips to allow for better access. Aaravos pushed inside with his tongue, the sensation strange, wet, and delicious. Viren struggled to catch his breath just as Aaravos pulled out—

—and then stuffed him full again with four magically slick fingers.

“Oh, Aaravos, _god,”_ Viren moaned. This meant, _Aaravos is my god_ , but he couldn’t string all that together at the moment.

The fullness was so, so good.

And then he pulled out, far too soon.

“Please!” Viren gasped.

Aaravos waved his hand and his own trousers vanished by magic. Viren saw his gorgeous, leaking cock, and then Aaravos was holding Viren’s knees, leering down at him while the head of his cock pressed against Viren’s hole.

“Tell me what you want, Viren,” Aaravos teased, his tip setting off the nerves at Viren’s entrance.

“To worship you,” Viren said immediately.

Aaravos’s eyes flashed. Had Viren said the wrong thing?

“Want you?” he tried confusedly. “Adore... Fuck—”

Aaravos’s cock slid wetly into him, and he groaned, full with pleasure.

“You’re so good, my dear Viren,” Aaravos crooned. He thrust and Viren cried out, voice breaking. “Look at how good you are for me.”

“A—ah—ah—” Viren couldn’t hold back as Aaravos began to fuck him. Through the thick cloud of pleasure he was vaguely aware of Aaravos watching him.

“How you submit to me,” Aaravos praised him. “Even before you trusted me, you obeyed and submitted to me completely. You were loyal before you understood who I was. That is so rare and beautiful, Viren. And _now...”_

He fucked Viren hard, Viren screaming out. Aaravos pinned his wrists above his head, digging them into the dirt like he was shackling him to the earth.

Viren’s whole body tensed at once. He came hard, gratification riding over him in waves, his cock painting his own chest. He let Aaravos pound him still, milking out every last drop of pleasure, until the sensitivity was too much.

He hissed, and Aaravos pulled out carefully. It was like unstopping a full bottle; elven come immediately drooled down Viren’s legs, soiling Aaravos’s cloak beneath him. Aaravos leaned over Viren and cupped his chin.

“My sweet pet,” Aaravos hummed, and Viren sighed with relief at the rightness of that title. He was...honored to be claimed by Aaravos, to belong to him.

“Is there something you still want?” Aaravos asked. “Or have you forgotten it in your bliss?”

“Kiss,” Viren breathed without hesitation.

Aaravos smiled and leaned forward, collecting Viren in his arms.

After so long without this, the first thing Viren felt when their lips met was immense contentment. He sighed against Aaravos, parting his lips, letting Aaravos inside him. He was sleepy, post-coital, and there was no resistance in him as Aaravos’s stars traveled down his body.

It was different from before, but no less pleasurable. In fact—it was _better,_ because before the feeling had been strange and overwhelming. He realized that Aaravos had been holding back when he startouch kissed Viren, had been making sure that his stars didn’t burn Viren up and kill him. And even that restrained kiss had been too electric for Viren to receive for more than mere seconds before.

They didn’t have to worry about restraint anymore. Viren felt perfectly in control, the feeling of exquisite intimacy natural and right. It felt like being stroked from the inside, Aaravos exploring him with as many hands as there were stars, every part of him alive and thrumming.

That had been too much to bear before. But now the light belonged just as much to him as it did to Aaravos, and he could receive it. In fact, he could _direct_ it now, could show Aaravos exactly what he wanted Aaravos to know.

So he did.

Firstly, that he was in love with Aaravos. That was obvious, Aaravos already knew, but Viren showed him exactly what it felt like: How it glowed and stirred within him, how he revolved around Aaravos like Aaravos was his star. How Aaravos had both given him the star arcanum and been the one to connect him back to earth. He was the reason for Viren’s magic and for Viren’s sanity.

Viren showed him how he savored Aaravos’s insistence on living as a mortal, his dedication to the sensual, to humor, to communicating with humans. Aaravos had remained generous even in the face of the expanding coldness of the universe, and there was immense strength in that.

He showed Aaravos how it pained him that he had not yet figured out how to worship Aaravos properly. A constant worry niggled at him: He was afraid Aaravos thought that Viren mistook them for equals. Viren learning the star arcanum had not deluded him into imagining they had similar powers. If anything, his newfound primal magic only helped him better grasp how utterly superior Aaravos was—

Aaravos parted, leaving Viren’s lips buzzing.

 _“That’s_ what you’re afraid of?” Aaravos said, laughing. “You’re afraid you haven’t _submitted_ to me enough?”

Viren was surprised by how much the mockery hurt. His chest panged. He had tried submitting to Harrow, had wanted that king to be worth more than Viren’s own life. Harrow, too, had mocked him.

“Shh,” Aaravos said, stroking his cheek. “My sweet human. Stop fretting.” He kissed Viren on the lips. “How can I soothe you?” He looked Viren in the eyes, his face so close it blurred, and Viren understood that the question was rhetorical. Aaravos would find the answer himself.

“Here,” he said, and cupped Viren’s face, kissing him again. His tongue slipped into Viren’s mouth.

The first feeling Viren felt was straight in Aaravos’s cock: _Unsatisfied._ He hadn’t come, and the need for release burned through him, took an incredible amount of self-control to ignore.

Viren felt suddenly like his own orgasm had never happened. He panted against Aaravos’s mouth, reaching, pulling, hoping Aaravos understood.

He did, and he straddled Viren again, sliding his cock inside Viren easily, Viren’s hole still so wet and open. Viren moaned into the kiss, his soul exploring even deeper inside Aaravos as Aaravos fucked him.

The next emotion he felt was gratitude. Aaravos was constantly grateful that Viren had freed him. And he was impressed by Viren, extraordinarily so. Viren had explored dark magic more deeply than any other human in a thousand years, had slayed Aaravos’s arch nemesis before even meeting Aaravos.

Aaravos had felt alien and misunderstood for centuries, and then he had met this human whose thoughts and feelings often intertwined with his, despite the vast differences between them. He’d felt connected to Viren long before Viren had learned the star arcanum, and now their connection had reached new heights—heights Aaravos had never predicted. How in awe he was of Viren, who kept surprising him again and again and again, befuddling even the stars.

Viren was the furthest thing from inferior. All he had ever done was amaze Aaravos.

Suddenly Aaravos fucked him hard, grunting against his lips. Viren held onto him tight, kissing him as he thrust. He could feel Aaravos’s entire body tensing—finally— _finally—_

Aaravos came with a roar, Viren feeling all the fiery pleasure as if it were his own. He released a strangled cry, coming a second time as his mind confused Aaravos’s orgasm for his own. Aaravos, in turn, felt Viren’s climax, which strengthened his own. Viren quaked as his pleasure grew, both of them entering an orgasmic ouroboros of give-and-take. Flashes of cosmic light overtook them as their bodies glittered frantically with stars. Viren shook and writhed, filling up with starlight, and he would have lost himself if Aaravos hadn't held him down to the earth.

The only reason they eventually slowed was because they wanted to, because the only alternative was cold stardust and infinity.

Aaravos was already talking as their lips parted.

“I want to fuck you again and again and _again.”_

Viren laughed. “And kiss you—”

“Yes, forever—”

They both clung to each other, panting against each other’s mouths, euphoric. All at once the feeling was too much. This was too otherworldly, too deeply metaphysical. The stars were reaching for him—

“I love you,” Aaravos said, like a spell. It was the first time he had said it out loud. Actually uttering the words seemed ordinary and redundant and earth-stuff.

But earth-stuff was good.

Viren settled.

“I love you,” he said. The way Aaravos’s breathing slowed let Viren know that the words had calmed him, too, brought them both back safely to Earth. Aaravos collapsed beside Viren, although his stars still made Viren’s skin glitter, letting Viren know Aaravos was still inside him.

“You’re so exquisite like this,” Aaravos whispered. “My come leaking down your thighs, your whole body dripping in my magic.” His fingers danced across Viren’s chest, tickling at the lights that shimmered there. “You were right, Viren. You have mastered the stars, and that means I can kiss you in the way I was made to kiss. I don’t have to hold back. Only with you, I don’t have to hold back.”

Viren felt warmed to the brim by that revelation. There was no one, literally no creature in the universe, who could survive the full power of Aaravos’s love. Except for Viren.

“It’s the same,” he suddenly realized. “I...”

He had entered Aaravos’s mind and come out rarefied and strange, his own kisses now containing so much cosmic energy that only the most powerful mage in the world could survive them.

He understood now, why Aaravos no longer craved the worship of humankind. There was only one human powerful enough to submit to him properly.

“That’s right, my love,” Aaravos breathed, reading his mind. He wrapped an arm over Viren’s chest and pressed his lips to Viren’s ear, hot-breathed and intimate. “Don’t fret about how to best worship me. You have thousands of years to sort it out.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you SO much for reading to the end. Wow!!! Thank you for comments, for being so kind about typos, and for loving viravos! I might write a smutty epilogue at some point, but consider their arcs for this fic complete. Here's to hoping these two weirdos stay honeymoon-in-love long enough to forget about taking over the world. <3


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